Prices of memory chips, including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and all types of flash memory, have rallied throughout 2017, buoying the business value of five of the top 10 semiconductor companies that design and manufacture chips. American and Korean players have long dominated the memory market and none of them is willing to start a price war. Accordingly, memory prices will likely continue to trend upward as the 2018 market outlook remains positive.

With the growing popularity of smart speakers and voice assistance tools offered by first-tier Internet service providers, many have focused on the development of emerging home devices. But for UnlimiterHear, which develops audio solutions, it sees the potential of integrating voice assistance functionality into mobile devices such as Bluetooth earphones and speakers. UnlimiterHear expects the new smart Bluetooth earphones and speakers to be able to gradually replace traditional Bluetooth earphones and speakers.

Aurotek, founded in 1981, was one of the earliest automation equipment component suppliers in Taiwan. The company started the business as a distribution agent of mechanical equipment components such as bearings, ball screws, and universal joints from Japan, according to Aurotek's special assistance to chairman Nelson Chang.

Singapore-based Sesto Robotics is an automated guided vehicle (AGV) and intelligent mobile robot (IMR) developer that recently participated in Semicon Taiwan 2017 to push its products into the Taiwan market.

2017 is definitely a highly volatile year for PV industry in terms of technology advancement, market demand, and international trade barrier. At 2017 PV Taiwan held recently, Andreas Liebheit, the President of Heraeus Photovoltaics, broadly talked about the issues of technology trend, market competition, as well as how Heraeus maintains its leading edge at the rapidly evolving PV market, in an interview with Digitimes.

Linde LienHwa, a joint venture between the Germany-based Linde Group and Taiwan-based LienHwa Industrial, is a manufacturer of bulk and electronic specialty gases used during the manufacturing of semiconductors, displays, solar panels, LEDs and others.

The launch of Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone X has highlighted wireless charging, a function that will also be featured in other smartphine vendors' upcoming models. However, besides smartphones, NXP Semiconductors also sees potential in wireless charging for larger-size applications such as notebooks and even home appliances. The company is already planning to develop solutions with larger watt support.

Taiwan-based Arbor Technology has been in the industrial PC (IPC) secor for over 20 years and has always been an important upstream partner of worldwide IPC brand vendors. With automated production lines and Industry 4.0 gradually becoming the new trends of the IPC industry, Arbor also is keenly developing solutions for clients.

With autonomous driving becoming a new trend in the IT market, many first-tier IT players including Google and Nvidia have been aggressively expanding their presence in related development. Taiwan's hardware providers have played a key role in the supply chain of the emerging industry.

Digital transformation in manufacturing is one of the key topics for the upgrading and transformation of Taiwan industries. It also shows new types of business models are emerging and leveraging the disruptive technologies. While industry 4.0 being welcomed overwhelmingly by the governments around the globe such as "Made In China 2025" and "Internet Plus", the enterprises learn to quickly response to the market using the powerful features of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and advanced IT technology for analyzing the data gathered by smart sensors.