Because of the US-China trade tensions and Intel's ongoing CPU shortages, worldwide all-in-one (AIO) PC shipments are expected to shrink 5% on year to arrive at only 12.8 million units in 2019, a weaker performance than expected previously, according to Digitimes Research's figures.

After having declined for three consecutive years, global shipments of AIO (all-in-one) PCs are estimated to surge 3% on year to 13.92 million units in 2017, according to Digitimes Research.

Global server shipments are estimated to surge 7.1% on year to 12.65 million units in 2017 and post a higher growth of 8.5% in 2018, due mainly to expanding demand for datacenter servers and significant growth momentum expected in the China market, according to Digitimes Research.

Mini LEDs, with much higher yield rates than those for Micro LEDs, are expected to come into commercial production next year, with initial application expected to be backlighting of LCD automotive displays, according to Digitimes Research.

AMOLED smartphone panel shipments to China are expected to keep increasing, but Samsung Display's dominance in the market will start seeing challenges from local competitors in 2018 when they ramp up production for AMOLED panels, according to Digitimes Research.

Worldwide top-5 notebook brand vendors together and top-3 ODMs combined saw their shipments decrease 37% and 32% on month, respectively in April because of their strong shipments in March and weak demand in April. Since April was still in the slow season for the notebook market, inventory adjustment was the key focus for most brand vendors. However, compared to volumes in the same month a year ago, the top-5 vendors' combined shipments were up 6%, while the top-3 ODMs saw growth of 11%, showing that the worldwide notebook market was still on track to a healthy rebound.

China-based vendors will together ship 151.8 million smartphones globally during the second quarter of 2017, increasing 13.0% on quarter but decreasing 2.7% on year and taking up 46.7% of the global total, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan-based TFT-LCD panel makers will together ship 58.15 million large-size (9-inch and above) panels during the second quarter of 2017, increasing 3.4% on quarter but decreasing 0.4% on year and taking up 34.9% of global total, according to Digitimes Research.

There will be 35.08 million tablets shipped globally during the second quarter of 2017, decreasing 5.7% on quarter and 13.7% on year, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan-based TFT-LCD panel makers will together ship 304.278 million small- to medium-size panels during the second quarter of 2017, an increase of 2.8% on quarter and 13.0% on year, according to Digitimes Research.

April 2017 average retail price for 7W LED light bulbs (40W incandescent equivalents) in the China market decreased 11.3% from February 2017 to CNY23.5 (US$3.4), while that for 9W models (60W incandescent equivalents) increased 9.3% to CNY31.7, according to Digitimes Research.

Shipments of smartphone-use application processors (APs) in the China market are expected to grow 10.5% on quarter but decline 10.8% on year to 129.85 million units in the second quarter of 2017, according to Digitimes Research.

While 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) plans to decide on first-stage 5G standards in the second half of 2018, some mobile telecom carriers showcased field testing of 5G key technologies and telecom equipment vendors exhibited point-to-point 5G network solutions at the Mobile World Congress 2017 earlier this year. This signals that commercial use of 5G technologies will begin ahead of the original schedule, according to Digitimes Research.

Among Japan-based exhibitors at Finetech Japan 2017 taking place in Tokyo during April 5-7, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) cut a brilliant figure by showcasing several 8K OLED panels based on oxide semiconductor back planes, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan-based makers together shipped 6.735 million LCD TVs in first-quarter 2017, the lowest quarterly level since first-quarter 2010. The volume represents decreases of 33.2% sequentially and 8.4% on year, according to Digitimes Resaerch.

China-based panel makers exhibited small- to medium-size TDDI (touch and display driver integration) LTPS TFT-LCD panels and flexible AMOLED panels at China Information Technology Expo (CITE) 2017 in Shenzhen, southern China, during April 9-11, according to Digitimes Research.

While LG Electronics has dominated the global OLED TV market, Japan-based Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba still launched OLED TVs in Japan in the first quarter of 2017, with panels supplied by LG Display. However, to differentiate from LG Electronics’ products, the Japan-based vendors are expected to focus on developing their own technologies for their OLED TVs.

Taiwan's LCD monitor shipments dropped 6.2% on year to reach below 20 million units in the first quarter of 2017, while worldwide shipments also experienced a similar decline of 6.8% on year. For the second quarter, Taiwan's volume will continue to see an on-year decline of 8.4%, while worldwide shipments will drop 7.2%, showing the market has yet to recover.

Biometric sensor technologies are mainly separated into two major categories: the static type such as fingerprint, iris, face, palm vein recognition; and the dynamic type such as voiceprint, heartbeat and gait recognition. In 2016, fingerprint recognition sensor shipments were around 780 million units, accounting for 96% of all biometric sensor product shipments. As more new sensor technologies will begin entering the market, biometric sensor product shipments are expected to achieve a CAGR of 31.2% from 2017-2020.

IR (infrared) and UV-C (ultraviolet with wavelength of 240-290nm) LED, automotive headlights, Micro LED and OLED lighting were major attractions at Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS) and LED Taiwan 2017 jointly taking place in Taipei during April 12-15, according to Digitimes Research.

The China government began to implement the Broadband China policy in 2013 and consequently fiber-optic infrastructure has been widely established. The number of FTTH subscribers quickly increased to 227.7 million as of the end of 2016, accounting for 76.6% of all fixed-line broadband Internet-access subscribers, according to Digitimes Research.

Nissan Motor launched new Serena, a sedan car equipped with in-house-developed ProPilot semi-autonomous driving technology designed for running in single-lane traffic along highways, in the Japan market in August 2016, and aims to upgrade the autonomous driving level of ProPilot to running in interchangeable-lane traffic along highways in 2018 and on urban roads with complicated traffic conditions in 2020.

Japan-based Nichia generated revenues of US$2.423 billion from LED packaging in 2016, the highest among all LED packaging service providers around the world, according to Digitimes Research.

Samsung Display and LG Display, in view of large potential growth in demand, will continue their expansion of small- to medium-size AMOLED panel production, with combined annual capacity expected to reach 16.069 million square meters in 2020, 3.17 times the 5.067 square meters in 2016, according to Digitimes Research.

LCD panel shipments for digital signage will reach 4.4 million units globally in 2017, increasing 8.6% on year, and the shipments will keep growing to 5.8 million units in 2020, according to Digitimes Research.

8K-resolution display technology is being developed for medical application in Japan, with typical cases being use in endoscopic surgery by National Cancer Center Hospital and in remote medical diagnosis developed by NTT Data which is a global IT innovator, according to Digitimes Research.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have been developed in a direction of featuring autonomous driving solutions that can take control to enhance road safety, instead of simply acting as a warning system to assist drivers.

China has strong demand for robots, but locally produced robots took up only 26.7% of its demand in 2015. Too meet the demand, China firms have geared up development of robots with government incentives in recent years and the use of robots has extended from manufacturing to other sectors. But the development of China's robot industry faces two risks: over investment in low-end robots with low added values, and consequently oversupply, according to Digitimes Research.

India, with the number of its mobile users already exceeding one billion in 2015, the number of its broadband users accounting for 44.9% of Internet-access subscribers in the first half of 2016 and its GDP expected to grow at a pace of 8% by 2020, has become a highly anticipated mobile communication market in recent years, according to Digitimes Research.

The Japan government relaxed regulations on unlocking SIM of handsets in early 2017 and consequently MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) business has been in booming development in the Japan mobile communication market, with several MVNOs expanding retail networks and offering more services to attract subscribers, according to Digitimes Research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) based on deep neural network (DNN) architecture has been widely used in image recognition and has large potential in autonomous driving, according to Digitimes Research.

At Mobile World Congress 2017, three tends of wireless networking/communication development were revealed: Commercial operation of pre-5G networks will begin ahead of the original schedule; mobile telecom carriers are driven to change their roles to cope with fast IoT growth; 5G networks will be extensive through daily life, according to Digitimes Research.

Samsung Display and LG Display, for front-end manufacturing process of flexible OLED panels, still have to rely on imported organic materials used in vapor deposition, but the reliance is decreasing through Samsung Group's and LG Group's mergers with and stake investment in foreign enterprises to obtain relevant patents for self-production of such materials by Samsung SDI and LG Chem respectively, according to Digitimes Research.

Along with the fast development of self-driving technology, there will be increased demand for driver sensing systems used to monitor drivers for determining whether they are able to take over driving when self-driving breaks down, with the global market value for such sensing systems used in level 2 (partial self-driving combined with autonomous functions) and above self-driving to rise to US$2.34 billion in 2025, 3.2 times that in 2015, according to Digitimes Research.

The worldwide top-5 notebook brand vendors saw their combined shipments in February grow 20% on month and 22% on year, while the top-3 ODMs' shipments also experienced 10% on-month and 30% on-year growths in the month as demand was better than expected. In addition, the Lunar New Year holidays in 2017 fell mainly in January, which created limited impact on February's working hours.

Most Taiwan-based ODMs saw their all-in-one (AIO) PC shipments drop on year in 2016 except Compal Electronics and Micro-Star International (MSI). TPV-Inventa Technology - originally an AIO PC joint venture between TPV Technology and Inventec, but became a subsidiary of Inventec in September 2015 - disclosed in April 2016 its decision to quit the AIO PC market, and its AIO PC shipments dropped to less than one million units in 2016.

The global number of LTE (4G) mobile communication subscribers quickly increased to 1.935 billion at the end of 2016 according to statistics by the GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association), but because the 4G user density (the number of 4G users divided by the population) in China is nearly 60% and mobile telecom carriers Southeast Asia, India and some European countries have not actively set up LTE networks, growth in the global number of LTE subscribers will slow down in the beginning of 2017, according to Digitimes Research.

February 2017 average retail prices for 7W LED light bulbs (equivalent to 40W incandescents) in the China market increased 0.8% from December 2016 to CNY26.5 (US$3.9), while 9W models (equivalent to 60W incandescents) decreased 4.6% to CNY29, according to Digitimes Research.

Combined revenues of Taiwan's top-3 foundries: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS), are estimated at US$8.91 billion in the first quarter of 2017, down 7.6% sequentially but up 20.5% on year, according to Digitimes Research.

Worldwide notebook shipments (not including 2-in-1 devices) surpassed 40 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, dropping only 1.2% on year. Shipments from Taiwan-based ODMs even achieved on-year shipment growth in the quarter thanks to strong demand from the US and Europe due to seasonality and US-based brand vendors expanding their presence in the market despite component shortages. In the first quarter, worldwide shipments will also enjoy on-year shipment growth as enterprises' adoption of Windows 10 grows steadily, while Microsoft's new free Windows licensing plan is growing popular among notebook vendors.