Elon Musk’s SpaceX completes its fourth test flight of mega rocket from Texas without exploding

Elon Musk’s SpaceX completes its fourth test flight of mega rocket from Texas without exploding

SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket completed its first full test flight Thursday, returning to Earth without exploding after blasting off from Texas.

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“Despite the loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said via X.

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The three previous flight demos ended in explosions. This time, the rocket and the spacecraft managed to splash down in a controlled fashion, making the hour-long flight the longest and most successful yet.

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The moon will likely be Starship's first far-flung stop, however. NASA selected the craft as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration, which aims to establish a research base in the ice-rich south polar region by the end of the 2020s. The current architecture calls for Starship to land NASA astronauts on the moon for the first time in September 2026, on the Artemis 3 mission.

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Comment: Starship will need to ace many more test flights before it's ready for that landmark mission, but the stainless-steel spacecraft is off to a good start: It has made significant progress on each of its four liftoffs to date.

Tesla Denies BYD as Its Energy Storage Battery Supplier

Recent reports claimed that BYD's subsidiary, FinDreams Battery, had reached a supply agreement with Tesla for its Shanghai energy storage factory, planning to supply energy storage cells to the latter in the first quarter of next year. Today, Tesla responded to these reports, stating that the information is not true.

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Tesla's car sales saw a year-over-year decline for the first time in 15 quarters during Q1 this year. By contrast, the energy storage systems turn into the firm’s new growth driver. In Q1 this year, Tesla's revenue from its energy generation and storage business secured $1.635 billion, a 7% increase compared to the same period last year. Musk had previously unveiled in the Q3 earnings call last year that, in the long run, Tesla's energy business would be larger than its automotive business.

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Comment: The energy storage business is currently the fastest-growing sector for the entire BYD Group. According to official information from Fudi, Fudi's energy storage battery sales reached 28.4 GWh last year, with a year-over-year growth rate exceeding 136%, more than twice the growth rate of BYD's car sales.

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Samsung and LG set to supply 130 million OLED panels for iPhone 16 series

Apple’s Korean display supply chain, which comprises of Samsung and LG, was previously said to have received approval to only mass produce the iPhone 16 Pro OLED panels. However, according to the latest update, both manufacturers have been given the green light to manufacture all iPhone 16 displays, with a new report stating that the estimated figure is around 130 million units.

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The iPhone 16 will include non-Pro versions and two ‘Pro’ variants, and according to news aggregator website Naver, Samsung will provide the highest number of OLED panels to Apple, with LG coming in second place. The Korean giant is estimated to supply 90 million displays and will be responsible for providing the components for all iPhone 16 models, whereas LG has been tasked to fulfill orders for the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. LG is said to mass produce 43 million OLED screens, though the total comes out to be less than 130 million.

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Comment: An industry insider mentioned that domestic panel manufacturers indeed supplied OLED panels for the iPhone 15 series, but these panels were for refurbishment purposes and are not currently used for mass production.

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Multiple Memory Chipmakers Set to Raise Memory Prices in Q3

According to CFM Flash Market news, after huge price hikes for three consecutive quarters, multiple memory chip manufacturers are signaling another price increase for Q3. However, the price increase rates will shrink in the next quarter.

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So far, most customers' Q2 contract prices have been finalized. In the server market, in light of the AI boom, the demand for HBM and DDR5 is soaring. Internet companies actively replenish their inventories and accept the price rise. Prices of enterprise SSDs uplifted by an average of 25%-30%, with some NAND ASP at USD 0.12/GB, and server RDIMM prices climbing by 10%-20%.

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In contrast, the consumer market like PCs and smartphones, is more sensitive to prices, with sale stagnation and component cost increases. After tough negotiations, embedded UFS contract prices rose by 5%-10% quarter-over-quarter to $0.070-0.075 USD/GB, LPDDR4X prices increased by 3%-8% to $0.27-0.28 USD/Gb, and LPDDR5X prices saw a 0-3% rise to $0.29-0.30 USD/Gb. In the PC application sector, with manufacturers adjusting production capacity and pushing for strong price increases, leading PC end users are accepting 10%-15% price hikes for PC SSDs and around 10% for PC DRAM, with NAND ASP mainly at $0.065-0.070 USD/GB.

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Some PC companies, despite accepting price hikes, have poor actual pick-up performance. The overall consumer electronics market shows a trend of demand decrement with price increments.

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Comment: Even internet companies who actively stocked up before found it hard to accept the continuous price hikes. Amid AI GPU supply restricted in China, Chinese tech firms can only achieve AI performance by stacking low-performance chips. Consecutive quarters of price jumps have dramatically raised hardware costs. Given that AI has yet to see the practical application and future commercialization remains uncertain, continued leaps in component costs may dampen terminal investment enthusiasm.

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LGD Accelerates OLED Transition, Plans to Close LCD Factory in South Korea

As per South Korean media IMAEIL, LG Display (LGD), a leading global display panel manufacturer, has confirmed it will shut down its M3 factory (module production line) in South Korea, by the end of August this year. This news has drawn widespread attention in the industry, not only because LGD is a global leader in display panel manufacturing, but also because closing the factory will directly affect hundreds of employees' livelihoods and local economic development.

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LGD's M3 plant primarily produces IT LCD module products and is a crucial part of LGD's global production map. However, with the rapid rise of OLED technology and increasing competition in the LCD market, the M3 factory's production efficiency and profitability have gradually declined, no longer meeting the company's long-term development needs.

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Comment: Other manufacturers, such as Samsung Display and BOE, are also actively investing in the OLED sector, intensifying market competition. Therefore, LGD needs to accelerate its investment and innovation in the OLED field to maintain its competitive edge and prepare for future market changes.