Taiwan-based makers shipped 9.52 million LCD TVs globally in fourth-quarter 2020, increasing 9.8% sequentially and 12.3% on year, according to Digitimes Research.TPV Technology was the largest maker, accounting for 46.9% of the shipment volume, followed by Foxconn Electronics (22.3%), Innolux (13.1%), AmTran Technology (12.9%) and Compal Electronics (4.3%), Digitimes Research indicated.60-inch and above TVs accounted for 15.7% of the shipments; 50- to 59-inch, 28.7%; 46- to 49-inch, 2.2%; 40- to 45-inch, 20.0%; 32- to 39-inch, 28.0%; and below 32-inch, 5.4%.In terms of regional markets, North America accounted for 49.5% of the shipments, Asia Pacific for 25.7%, and Europe for 17.7%.Taiwan makers shipped 29.11 million LCD TVs in 2020, decreasing 2.4% on year, and will ship 5.92 million unit in first-quarter 2021, dropping 37.8% sequentially but growing 27.3% on year.

Worldwide tablet shipments climbed to a 13-quarter high of 51.56 million units in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Digitimes Research. However, shipments will fall 31% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021.Worldwide tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020 increased 17.6% sequentially and 19.3% on year thanks to seasonal factors and rising demand from stay-at-home activities amid the coronavirus outbreak, Digitimes Research's figures show.Tablet brands also accelerated their shipment paces in the fourth quarter of 2020 amid concerns of worsening shortages of IT chips in the first half of 2021. Apple's release of the inexpensive 10.2-inch iPad also significantly boosted overall tablet shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020.As the tablet market enters the traditional slow season in the first quarter of 2021, with component shortages showing no sign of easing, global tablet shipments in the quarter will slip more than 30% sequentially.Huawei's tablet shipments slipped sharply in the fourth quarter of 2020 as a result of insufficient CPU inventory. Lenovo, Amazon and TCL all surpassed Huawei to become the third to fifth largest brand worldwide. Huawei's shipments will decline further in the first quarter of 2021.Consumers' demand has continued to lean toward larger-size models with the shipment share of 11-inch and above brand tablets already reaching over 10% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and will rise to near 15% in the first quarter of 2021.Worldwide tablet shipments totaled 159.76 million units for whole-year 2020, up slightly by 2% on year thanks primarily to the pandemic-induced demand. However, Digitimes Research believes global tablet shipments will suffer an on-year decline in 2021 due mainly to the component shortages in the first half of the year.Currently, lead time for new orders for tablet chips that are in shortage is around 20 weeks and the short supply is unlikely to ease until the end of second-quarter 2021. Since tablet brands at the moment have all adopted the strategy of delivering shipments whenever they obtain components, Digitimes Research believes traditional seasonal patterns may not apply to global tablet shipments in 2021.

Smartphone shipments to the China market are expected to fall over 10% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021, after growing 19.2% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Digitimes Research's latest data from its smartphone tracker.With China's smartphone demand remaining weak in the fourth quarter of 2020 and key components remaining in short supply, smartphone shipments to the China market - despite an over 19% sequential growth - still dropped 10.5% on year, wth whole-year 2020 volumes slipping 17.2% on year, Digitimes Research's figures show.Honor, the smartphone brand which Huawei sold to a Chinese government-backed consortium in 2020, launched new-generation smartphones in late January. With other first-tier brands such as Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi to also continue keenly placing orders and Huawei pushing to digest its remaining smartphone AP inventory, the China smartphone market's shipments will drop only 12.5% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021 despite the quarter being the traditional slow season.Huawei's smartphone shipments to the China market further shrank in the fourth quarter of 2020, prompting its competitors to build up component inventory in a bid to take over Huawei's lost market share.However, the smartphone brands still faced serious shortages of components including APs, power management ICs and display driver ICs due to competitions from the PC and automotive sectors.Apple's iPhones took a major share of the China smartphone market's replacement demand and undermined shipments of Android-based smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2020. With the exception of Huawei, most Chinese first-tier Android smartphone brands increased the ratio of exports in the quarter, resulting in weaker-than-expected growths in their domestic shipments.In the fourth quarter of 2020, the top-5 smartphone brands were Huawei, Apple, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi, together contributing 97.5% of the volumes to the China's smartphone market, up slightly by 0.3pp.

There has been speculation suggesting that AMD may turn to Samsung for making its 5nm and 3nm chips in as its currernt foundry partner TSMC has been unable to provide sufficient capacity support. But industry observers in Taiwan say AMD is unlikely to make such a move. AMD has seen major gains in the PC market partly thanks to shotages of Intel CPUs. In general, notebook chip supply still falls far short of demand. Meanwhile, ODMs Pegatron and Quanta Computer reportedly are vying for orders to assemble AR/VR headsets to be launced by Apple. AMD unlikely to transfer orders away from TSMC: AMD is unlikely to transfer its 5nm or 3nm chip orders from TSMC to Samsung Electronics, and its ongoing tight supply of processors is due mainly to ABF substrate shortages rather than insufficient capacity support from its current foundry partner, according to industry observers.Notebook chips in tight supply: The supply of notebook-use chips including display driver ICs, power management chips and audio codecs chips continues to fall short of demand in the first quarter of 2021 despite it being a slow season traditionally for the notebook industry, according to Digitimes Research's finding.Pegatron, Quanta vying for assembly orders for Apple AR/VR headsets: Pegatron and Quanta Computer are still vying for final assembly orders for Apple's AR/VR headsets, while Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai) is set to supply parts modules, according to industry sources.

Eight-inch wafer foundry service provider VIS is increasing its capex budget for 2021, with the sum mainly for manufacturing process conversion and facility maintenance. Despite short supply of foundry services, VIS says it is increasingly expensive to hike 8-inch capacity, and its production capacity will rise only slightly in 2021. For EMS provider Foxconn, one of its goals for 2021 is to improve its gross margin to 7%. PC shipments have been strong, but the AIO segment has seen slower growth than the average, according to Digitimes Research. AIO PC shipments are expected to drop in first-quarter 2021. VIS raises 2021 capex: Eight-inch foundry Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) has budgeted NT$5.1 billion (US$182.33 million) in capex for 2021, up from the NT$3.54 billion allocated last year.Foxconn to improve gross margin to 7% in 2021: Foxconn expects to improve its gross margin this year to 7% in 2021, and will continue to deepen its deployments in a spate of segments including electric vehicles (EV), robots and semiconductors in the next few years seeking to ramp up gross margin to 10% in 2025, according to industry sources.Global AIO PC shipments to fall in 1Q21, says Digitimes Research: Global AIO (all-in-one) PC shipments will be weighed down by lingering shortages of crucial parts and components to suffer a sequential decline of 17.5% in the first quarter of 2021, having edged up 3.3% to 3.54 million units a quarter earlier, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan's large-size panel shipments (excluding Sharp's) are expected to decline 7.3% sequentially in first-quarter 2021, having expanded 4.4.% sequentially and 26.5% on year to 74.76 million units in fourth-quarter 2020, according to Digitimes Research.In fourth-quarter 2020, Taiwan makers' shipments of large-size panels (9-inch and above) for tablet, automotive and PID applications enjoyed high sequential growths, Digitimes Research figures show.Tablet panels alone grew over 40% in the quarter, driven by seasonal factors and remote education demand. In response to robust demand, HannStar Display relocated more of its capacity for tablet panels, resulting in large-size panels' shipment growth.Looking into first-quarter 2021, shipments of IT panels (notebooks and monitors) will fall mildly within a range of below 5% sequentially thanks to more support from driver IC and power management (PWM) IC suppliers.Taiwan makers' TV panel shipments are forecast to fall 8.1% due to a ramp-up in output from China's 10.5G/11G LCD fabs, and their tablet panel shipments will drop by a double-digit rate due to decreased demand from Huawei and other white-box tablet vendors.

Global AIO (all-in-one) PC shipments will be weighed down by lingering shortages of crucial parts and components to suffer a sequential decline of 17.5% in the first quarter of 2021, having edged up 3.3% to 3.54 million units a quarter earlier, according to Digitimes Research.The fourth-quarter sequential shipment gains of AIO PCs were lower than a 20% growth experienced by overall desktop shipments, bringing down the ratio of AIO models in the desktop sector to 13% in the quarter, with the ratio likely to continue falling in first-quarter 2021, Digitimes Research estimates.For all of 2020, sales of AIO PCs fell by 3% from a year earlier, as consumers had prioritized their purchases to other electronic consumer products such as notebooks.By brands, Apple saw its iMac products grow 10% sequentially in fourth-quarter 2020 thanks to strong manufacturing and component support from its ODM partner, Quanta Computer.HP suffered an 8% decline during the same period, affected by component shortages.Among ODMs, Quanta, which produces AIO PCs for both Apple and HP, saw its AIO PC shipments remain flat in the fourth quarter. However, both Compal Electronics and Pegatron managed to ramp up their shipments by 12-13% thanks to orders from Lenovo and Asustek Computer, and Dell, respectively.

A Taiwan-based startup is ready to launch terminal simulation systems and 5G vertical applications to help local companies accelerate related efforts to develop, build, operate and maintain the 5G private networks.The startup Chuan Chih (transliterated from Chinese) also develops 5G service platforms and terminal solutions by optimizing core technologies and IP products transferred from Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University. The university became National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University through a merger with National Yang Ming University recently.Chuan Chih is currently working with a number of EMS firms to simulate and test the connectivity and reliability of 5G private networks built under virtual environments to help enterprises lower initial 5G network deployment costs, according to company CEO Gavin Hsu.Its simulation technology can be softwarized to create simulation movements with the highest flexibility and mobility that can be evenly distributed within the field of a designated 5G private network system to realize real-time scenarios, Hsu said.The company will also provide upper-level software products to help companies monitor and manage data traffic passing through their 5G wireless networks to optimize maintenance efforts and application parameters, Hsu added.About 60% of companies in the 5G private network supply chain are likely to adopt 5G private networks in 2021-2022, and the remaining 40% will build similar systems in 2023-2025, according to Chuan Chih, citing data from a survey it conducted in cooperation with other industrial partners in November 2020.Chuan Chih believes that some demonstration factories and hospitals with established 5G private networks will emerge in 2025-2030.

Taiwanese foundry houses' promises to devote more capacity to making automotive chips have raised concern among smaller IC designers. With the foundry capacity unlikely to see major expansion anytime soon, production of more automotive chips may increase at the expense of second-tier IC designers of other applications. Tight capacity has also been troubling the backend sector. To reflect the tight supply, driver IC backend specialists are looking to raise prices later in first-quarter 2021, having already done so in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, Chinese smartphone vendors see demand from both the domestic and overseas markets picking up. They are expected to see smartphone shipments grow annujally in first-quarter 2021, according to Digitimes Research.Fabless chipmakers worry about further supply constraints: With major Taiwan-based foundries expressing their supply commitments to their automotive customers, fabless chipmakers particularly second-tier players have expressed concerns about their supply being further constrained, according to industry sources.DDI backend houses to further raise quotes later in 1Q21: Display driver IC (DDI) backend specialists including Chipbond Technology and ChipMOS Technologies plan to enforce a second wave of price hikes in late February or early March to reflect their continued tight capacity, according to industry sources.China smartphone shipments to post annual gains in 1Q21: Chinese smartphone vendors are expected to see robust annual growths in first-quarter 2021 shipments to both the domestic and overseas markets, according to Digitimes Research.

Global server shipments are expected to increase 5% on year and see a slight sequential fall of only 1.8% in first-quarter 2021 thanks mainly to a ramp-up in demand from datacenter operators and the availability of new server processors, according to Digitimes Research.As leading datacenter operators in the US advanced shipment pull-in from server makers in fourth-quarter 2020 due to concerns over possible production disruptions by the worsening pandemic, global server shipments for the quarter shrank only 9.6% sequentially, down from an estimated contraction of 13%.Worldwide server shipments for full-year 2020 are estimated to have expanded 7.9% on year to over 16 million units after fluctuating over the course of the year, with shipments declining 18% sequentially in first-quarter and peaking in second-quarter with sequential increases of 28% before slowing down in the second half of the year, according to Digitimes Research's latest quarterly server tracker report.Brand vendors may see their shipment growth momentum for 2021 dented by enterprise clients in the US and Europe slowing down server procurements as the lingering pandemic may continue affecting the global economy and even disrupt production of key components.But the overall server shipments will remain on track for stable growth in 2021, given pandemic-induced strong datacenter server demand for cloud services, online shopping and video streaming applications, as well as strong replacement demand for servers adopting new-generation server CPUs released by Intel and AMD in the first half of the year.