Global shipments of smartphones, tablets and notebooks are expected to top 1.3 billion units in 2013, with smartphones and tablets accounting for more than 85% of total shipments and the ratio of notebooks continuing to scale down, according to Digitimes Research. However, price competition in the smartphone and tablet sectors will become increasingly fierce as the focuses of the two segments are trending toward production of models for mass market instead of the high-end sector.

The semiconductor industry, particularly the wafer foundry segment, is one of the most competitive industries in Taiwan. However, the global optoelectronics industry has also been growing at a fast pace since the beginning of the 21st century, which is likely to be named the era of optoelectronics industry, according to National Taiwan University Professor Ching-Fuh Lin.

The launch of the iPhone in 2007, which has since kicked off the robust development of mobile devices and telecommunications applications, combined with the roll-out of the iPad in 2010, which delivered a brand new user experience through application service platforms, have triggered a new wave of cloud-based services, according to Quen-Zong Wu, managing director of data communication business group at Chunghwa Telecom (CHT).

STMicroelectronics, the largest semiconductor company in Europe, has been promoting the integration of multi-axis sensor technology to enable innovative MEMS applications for the growing number of multi-platform mobile devices, according to Chiung Lee, senior technical marketing engineer of analog, MEMS and sensors at ST.

Intel, being a high-tech company with the spirit of innovation deeply engrained in every employee and with numerous innovative platforms and technologies, has been cooperating with ecosystem partners in Taiwan to deliver new technical know-how into end-market devices.

Mark Hopgood, corporate business development director at Dialog Semiconductor, emphasized that current projected capacitive touch technology have a limited penetration into large-size display products. Dialog has developed a multi-touch integrated circuit (MTIC) enabling FlatFrog's patented planar scatter detection (PSD) touch technology to roll out multi-touch solutions into consumer devices such as Ultrabooks, all-in-one (AIO) PCs and monitors delivering the same performance as projected capacitive technology and supporting Windows 8 multi-touch devices.

In line with a set of guidelines for industrial development through 2020, the Taiwan government aims to build up a smart handheld device industry having a production value of NT$1.68 trillion (US$56 billion) and accommodating a total of 150,000 employees by the end of the next decade, according to Jang-hwa Leu, deputy director general of the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

In the wake of an expanding smart handheld device market where iOS, Android and Windows are competing for dominance, Taiwan's industries are facing challenges never seen before because local manufacturers lack their own platforms such as those run by Apple, Google and Microsoft to control the integrated development of software, hardware and content, according to Colley Hwang, president of Digitimes.

Digitimes celebrated its 15th anniversary by holding a technology forum, titled "Trends and Challenges for the Development of Platform Architecture for Diversified Mobile Devices in 2013," at the Taipei International Convention Center on March 21.