Stefan Mileschin

Shrugs off Jobs' Mob downturn

Chip designer Dialog Semiconductor managed to hit its fourth-quarter revenue guidance despite a slump in iPhone sales at its main customer Apple.

Many observers expected Dialog to suffer badly because of its dependence on Apple orders. Dialog was one of the few Apple suppliers not to warn, stating at the time their comfort with the guidance provided.

This was odd as more than 75 percent of Dialog’s business is supplying power-management chips to Apple, which warned in November of slow year end sales and on 3 January issued its first sales warning in 12 years, blaming weaker iPhone sales in China.

CEO Jalal Bagherli said in November that Dialog was seeing less of an impact than other suppliers because its power management chips were used across a broad range of Apple devices and not just in iPhones.

Dialog struck a $600 million deal last October to transfer people and patents to Apple as part of a push to diversify its business.

The company says the deal will buy it time to expand into new areas such as the Internet of Things that includes connected devices like home speakers, fitness trackers or smart watches.

The deal was not expected to affect revenues in 2018, but Dialog will lose out on Apple power chip deals going forward. The company, which will emerge smaller after the transaction, expects Apple to account for 35-40 percent of revenues by 2022.

Dialog said its cash on hand was $678 million at the end of 2018, up $199 million year-on-year, and that it was debt-free. It will publish audited results for 2018 on March 6.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/479...revenue-target