MediaTek has teamed up with Intel to bring 5G experiences to next-generation PCs with successful development and certification of its 5G modem data card. And the Taiwanese IC designer reportedly is also working with AMD initially focusing on the development of custom Wi-Fi 6 ASIC chips. Meanwhile, the growing stary-at-home economy is shoring up demand for IT devices, such as notebooks. IC distributors belive the stay-at-home economy will continue throguh the end of 2020. And tight supply of LCD applications for IT devices is sending prices up, with order visibility extending to fourth-quarter 2020, according to AUO's chairman.MediaTek reportedly to partner with AMD in communication chip solutions: MediaTek, which will provide its 5G modem chips for Intel-powered PCs, is also likely to partner with AMD for chip solutions, according to industry sources.IC distributors optimistic about demand arising from stay-at-home economy: IC distributors expect stable demand for notebooks, tablets, datacenter and game consoles through the end of 2020, thanks to the rise of stay-at-home economy.Panel prices going up along with tight supply, says AUO chairman: The supply of LCD panels is getting increasingly tight, with most panel makers likely to see their order visibility extend to the fourth quarter of 2020, according Paul Peng, chairman of AU Optronics (AUO).

TSMC is fast expanding output for advanced manufacturing nodes. Its 7nm process has already seen output reach 130,000 wafers monthly, with production to be rising further by the end of the year. Apple is expected to continue to rely on TSMC to build the chips for its next-generation iPhone for 2021, but the iPhone ecosystem faces a major shakeup next year. For Google, it is developing its next-generation Chromebook in collaboration with its ODM partner, Compal Electronics.TSMC 7nm process output to top 140,000 wafers monthly: TSMC has already scaled up its 7nm process output to 130,000 wafers monthly ahead of schedule, with the monthly production set to climb further to 140,000 units at the end of this year, according to industry sources.Apple iPhone supply chain poised for major shakeup in 2021: Firms currently in the iPhone supply chain are believed to be experiencing strong order pull-ins from Apple at the moment ahead of the launch of 5G iPhone line later this year. But the iPhone ecosystem faces a major shakeup in 2021 as Apple has stepped up efforts building a new supply chain in China for its smartphones, according to industry sources.Google, Compal teaming up for new-gen Chromebook: Google is developing its next-generation Chromebook, codenamed Halvor, with Compal Electronics being the ODM partner, according to industry sources.

While IT staff play a crucial role in enterprises' digital transformation, decision makers who use data to optimize operations are key to the success of digital transformation, according to Wu Mei-feng, an industry consultant at i-Torch Technology.Digital transformation is not merely about introducing IT into work, but involves modification in internal operational process and even changes in business model, Wu said at a recent event organized by Digitimes.Responsible for operating and maintaining IT systems, IT staff are actually an auxiliary tool in enterprises' digital transformation because they cannot define the criteria for use of data, Wu noted. For example, OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) consists of many aspects including operation of production capacity and defect rate control, and for data collection it is necessary to define the criteria for abnormal and reliable conditions, Wu indicated.The definition hinges on operational executives' know-how and is essential to meaningful and valuable data collection during digital transformation, Wu said. Many enterprises wrongly believe digital transformation can be attained through IT staff introducing analytical tools or systems to upgrade internal IT systems, Wu added.Reliability of collected data is crucial, Wu noted, adding more standardized operational processes lead to fewer human errors and result in more reliability of collected data.

ZNT-Richter is a global IT company. In the past 30+ years, ZNT has successfully developed software solutions suitable for the manufacturing industry to help customers improve production processes and product quality.In an interview conducted during the 2020 China International Industry Fair CIIF, Bernhard Marsoner, CEO, ZNT (Zentren fur Neue Technologien GmbH), and Aaron Chou, ZNT's general manager of Greater China, talked about the current pandemic-affected global environment, and prospects and challenges in the field of advanced industrial automation.Q: The term "digitalization" is no stranger to the construction of smart factories. Especially during this epidemic manufacturing companies are facing both challenges and opportunities. How does ZNT help customers to accelerate their digital transformation in manufacturing?A: We see two major challenges. First product life cycles get shorter and shorter. Thus, manufacturing companies are forced to introduce new products quicker while achieving a high-quality production in a shorter time. To achieve this, a lot of data is needed and operator influence on production quality like setting the wrong recipe on a machine or recording wrong data must be eliminated.Second products are supposed to become cheaper while margin shall grow. The only way to achieve this is Smart Manufacturing with a high level of automation. Smart Manufacturing enables for more individualized and stable production while reducing cost and increasing efficiency. Automation drives automatic decisions to eliminate manual errors and provides automated traceability and high data quality with feedback loops to Design. This leads to a closed loop manufacturing approach which in turn speeds up new product introductions.The outbreak of the epidemic at the beginning of this year showed clearly that highly automated lights out factories were by far less affected than factories relying on workers on the shop floor.Since the promotion of industry 4.0 about seven years ago to the promotion of General Factory Automation in China, ZNT helped many customers in the semiconductor, solar energy, electronics, medical device and other high tech industries to adopt ZNT solutions for automating their factory and we still continue to upgrade them. Especially global customers appreciate and benefit from the professional level of ZNT in equipment automation solutions and MES consultant services while assisting them in their digital transformation strategy to introduce Smart Manufacturing.Many customers therefore can't get around implementing a forward looking platform-based solution with the flexibility and convenience of high configurability to speed up their automation process. With our global team we can deliver our projects in time, in budget and in quality.Q: Manufacturers who restarted after the epidemic are bound to face the challenges, including adjust the work patterns, environment and processes to ensure the health and safety of employees. How does ZNT help customers quantifying the benefits of automation and reduce risks after restart?A: Several investigations and analysis conducted within mid to large companies showed that following benefits can be achieved by adopting automation on the whole plant: increase of product quality by 2-5 times, increase of production efficiency by 40-70%, increase of equipment utilization rate by 2-3 times, reduction of production cycle times by 30-60%, and increase of working ability of engineers by 3-35 times.From the perspective of lights out factories, the meaning of automation is to be responsible for replacing human and manual judgment. Through digitalization, informatization and intellectualization, judgment and automatic production are similar to those of auto driving. Therefore, under the general trend of intelligent manufacturing, many harmful factors to human beings in many factories will definitely disappear in intelligent factories.While having less workers on the shop floor and having a system that assigns tasks to workers rather than the other way round, providing a safe environment including social distancing gets far easier. From a central control station you can steer all activities in the factory.Q: The Process Automation Control (PAC) product is a powerful and open platform, which is widely used in semiconductor, photovoltaic, electronic manufacturing, medical device and other high-tech industries. From the field level to the monitoring and analysis level, how to effectively organize, track and seamlessly integrate with the subsystems when facing huge data, ensure the stability of the large-scale machine system operation at the factory side, and effectively reduce the control and management cost? And how to connect big data to collect and analyze production information to obtain the possibility of predictive maintenance and prevention of unexpected downtime?A: We see a clear trend in IT departments responsible for maintaining MES systems in multi-site deployments to move MES to the cloud. From their perspective they can heavily reduce cost in maintaining a single solution deployed to several sites. But from an operational side, especially in automated environments, it is very important that the MES together with automation can be adapted very quickly and is highly available.PAC helps to achieve both while running close to the equipment, similar to edge computing. It allows for data buffering while the connection to the MES is temporarily not available. It reduces traffic due to consolidating and if required aggregating data from the equipment before sending them to other systems. It decouples equipment specific logic form central logic required in the MES. This allows an uninterrupted intercommunication between systems in the intelligent factory, error-free and fully automated. In addition, PAC supports an easy, flexible and quick adaption to new demands while still running the MES in a central environment and reducing the impact of changes to other system to a minimum. The flexible configuration platform allows production to deploy ahead of time and respond quickly. When the production line changes the demand, it allows flexible adjustment, and the work assignment to the equipment is more accurate and in place. With our professional consultants we provide the required advice for architecting and implementing the right software solution.Q: SEMI recently disclosed that the fab equipment expenditures in 2021 will hit a record high of US$70 billion. This is the second time it has revised next year's estimates. It is optimistic that this year's fab equipment expenditures will turn from negative to positive 6% to US$59.6 billion. The advanced manufacturing process of fabs and the heavy investment in the China market will increase by 13% in 2021. China is actively investing in foundry and memory, driving its equipment expenditure to the top in 2020 and 2021. Could you please talk about the future expectation and layout of ZNT in the Greater China market? How do you ensure success in your projects while scaling up your company?A: Under the threat of epidemic situation and the current global economic and political uncertainties it is an indisputable fact that the supply chain established by semiconductor and its related industries is one of the decisive factors. With the rapid development of semiconductor in personal consumer goods, scientific and technological products, automobile components, military science and technology, national defense and military industry, aerospace and aviation, the professional level has been incomparable.In the foreseeable future, the global or Asia Pacific strategic layout will definitely take semiconductor and its supply chain as strategic industries. Therefore, the global layout has always been an important part of ZNT's strategy, while Europe, America and Asia are also different. There is a common ground behind the different layouts, which is sustainable development. Five years ago, it began to grow at a 10% annual growth rate in China. It is estimated that the momentum will continue for a while. Not only in China, but also in the whole Asia Pacific area.ZNT will maintain the position of continuous investment promotion focusing on its strength following this economic global trend. The offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Shanghai are still expanding. For ZNT, customer satisfaction is and remains the number one criterion for success and growth. Therefore, we are not only looking at specific skills of our employees, but also on their ability to take responsibility. Our experience shows that rushing in the design and creating quick and dirty solutions doesn't pay off at the end. The Implementation Methodology we are applying for projects is targeted to create solid and long-term maintainable solutions where the customer even can take over own responsibility through our enablement approach. We do not only fish for our customers, but we teach them how to fish.Q: The level of digitalization of China's industry is only about half that of developed countries such as the United States; and the current "new infrastructure" in China is great significance to the domestic economy. It is planned to adopt a new generation of ICT and 5G technology, to interconnect people, machines, and things, to links of all elements, to improve the entire industry chain efficiency, to accelerate industrial transformation, and promote industrial upgrade. In your opinion, how does ZNT and its partners in the future participate more deeply in the industrial upgrading and transformation of Chinese local market? What kind of enabling role could ZNT play?A: The China Gov new infrastructure strategy has standardized 5G, IoT and other technologies enabling national economic growth. This does not only have an impact on the manufacturing industry, construction industry, science and technology industry, but especially semiconductors and other IT based industries will see more and more demand for software and hardware allowing them to support such strategy.ZNT's PAC platform, partner MES solutions and professional consultants address the need of an accelerated industrial transformation - as we have been doing for more than 30 years now and long before I4.0 and IoT - enabling Chinese local markets to upgrade and grow.With the nationwide coverage of partners, we can provide close local support and service to customers, which does not only improve the service scope, but also the performance of local service with the largest support of flexible customization. At present, in addition to the global cooperation network with Siemens and tight cooperation with Siemens partners, having sales and implementation teams in individual regions is a key goal for us to ensure our continuous support to our valued customers. With this approach and our general company philosophy and outstanding products we are aiming for a very satisfied smile on our customer's faces.ZNT CEO Bernhard MarsonerAaron Chou, ZNT's general manager of Greater ChinaPhotos: Company

The US trade ban has driven Huawei to the edge. Taiwanese semiconductor suppliers who have met the Chinese vendor's high-level figures recently have come to a conclusion: Huawei fears its mobile device business will evaporate gradually. But it seems Huawei is not giving it up yet. DRAM spot market prices have gone up since last week amid speculation that Huawei is stocking up ahead of the implementation of the new US sanctions. Despite the Huawei woes, the smartphone market's recovery is fueling shipment momentum for TWS earbuds. Order visibility for TWS earbuds has extended to year-end 2020.Huawei reportedly resigned to worst possible outcome for smartphone biz: Huawei's senior officials have told Taiwan's semicondcutor suppliers that the Chinese company fears for the worst for its smartphone business because of the US trade ban, according to industry sources.DRAM spot prices rise: DRAM spot market prices have rallied over 5% since last week amid speculation about Huawei building up inventory prior to new US sanctions against it.TWS earbud shipments picking up: Shipments of true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds have started picking up with order visibility stretched through the end of 2020, according to industry sources.

China's IC design industry is forecast to generate more than CNY350 billion (US$51.1 billion) in sales in 2020, representing a CAGR of 22% from 2016 to 2020 - the timeframe of the country's 13th Five-Year Plan, according to Digitimes Research.The country still relies heavily on non-China chip supplies, but development of the ASIC segment is relatively mature.For China's 14th Five-Year Plan spanning from 2021 to 2025, achieving technological independence will remain the main goal for China's IC design industry amid the US-China trade tensions. Developments of IoT chips and open source architectures will be the key directions. Establishing in-house IC production capacity will also become a key strategy in response to the trade war with the US.By the end of 2020, the number of China-based IC design houses is expected to break 2,000, nearly double that of 2015. However, a lot of the efforts have been devoted to ASICs for mobile communication and AI applications, while supply of general ICs such as CPUs and GPUs still relies heavily on imports.Digitimes Research believes the US strategy of cutting chip supply to China will prompt it to gear up efforts establishing local chip manufacturing lines with IoT-related chips to become a key target.Pushing open-source architectures will also benefit China in the development of IoT chips and help it reach the state of technological independence.

While many still believe the US-China tech war will be over along with the end of the US presidential election, most China experts at US think tanks believe it will be difficult for the two superpowers to return to their pre-trade war relationships.Alex Capri, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, believes the US-China confrontation will extend from the technology sector - which he describes as ground zero - to other areas. During a recent interview by Digitimes, Capri - a former partner and regional leader at KPMG's Asia Pacific Trade and Customs Practice, and a former international trade specialist with the US Customs - explains what he calls "techno-nationalism" in the US-China disputes and analyzes post-pandemic and post US-election development for the global supply chain.Q: The US-China technology cold war is intensifying. Do you think their confrontation is going to expand to other fronts?A: Yes, I think so. There are strategic industries that will inevitably decouple. It doesn't mean all trade will cease. But there will be significant bifurcation of trade between the US and China around strategically sensitive issues.The technology sector is of course, ground zero. When we talk about industries of the future, foundational and emerging technologies, we will see export controls and weaponization of supply chains on the US side, expand beyond hard technologies such as semiconductors, and focus increasingly on data.How data is extracted, who has access to data, and so on, is exactly what we've seen now with WeChat and TikTok and the Trump administration's executive orders last week. I expect that these executive orders will expand to cover the parent company of WeChat, TenCent, and the BAT - Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent - companies, in general. Any major Chinese digital platform company is now fair game for different kinds of sanctions and controls.There are multiple facets to what I referred to as "techno-nationalism." There is the "national security" element, which involves technology or data and whether it is harvested or used to endanger national security, in some way, or whether it is related to military, defense, or cyber intrusion and cyber security. Whether it is cyber espionage or corporate espionage, theft of IP - all of these things are now directly tied to national security and tethered to the use of technology. Then there is the economic side of techno-nationalism, where countries promote their national champions. From an economic standpoint, this is a mercantilist kind of view of the world. This view is accelerating fragmentation and decoupling in global value chains. The third element of techno-nationalism involves the use of technology to suppress, or promote ideological and political values using different kinds of technologies. For example, how is technology used to protect or infringe data privacy, or, to censor, to suppress information, to conduct surveillance of populations, or to produce fake news - essentially, propaganda. This clash of values is now central to the ideological systems involving China and the US and liberal democracies, in general. How technology is used or may not be used, is going to dictate which business relationships and transactions are acceptable and which ones are restricted. We are seeing this play out through the imposition of export controls, and, more and more, companies being put on restricted entity lists. That is all playing out.Q: Yes, it's essentially the struggle between the different ideological values of China and the US. In Taiwan we are paying much attention to the semiconductor industry. There was a report from Wired, saying that there was a hacker attack on some of the high-tech companies in Taiwan. How valid or credible do you think it is?A: I don't doubt that. Although I don't have specific proof for this. But it is such a strategic industry. It is absolutely vital for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to try to catch up, because semiconductors is an Achilles heel for China Inc. There are still no Chinese companies that can produce state-of-the-art microchips. The latest move of the US to close the loopholes regarding the "foreign produced direct product rule" now prevents third parties in overseas jurisdictions from selling semiconductors to Huawei and Hisilicon, if those semiconductors are made with US manufacturing equipment, and/or US software and IP. As you know, TSMC has announced they would no longer supply Huawei and Hisilicon. That scenario, in the future, can potentially hit Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu as well, because their hardware infrastructures also require US semiconductor technology and there are no viable substitutes.Since the trade war began in 2018, there has been an exponential increase in corporate cyber-attacks in virtually all sectors. So, semiconductor industry would be a major target for cyber espionage at this point.Q: Can Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu also be impacted by the export restriction of semiconductors?A: They could be. So far there are still many companies that have not been put on the entity lists, such as SMIC. And certainly Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are vulnerable. One might ask why the US administration would consider doing that, because these (TikTok and WeChat) are social media platforms, and they have a tiny market share in the US. The argument is: yes, that maybe true, but they are part of the China Inc ecosystem. From the techno-nationalist point of view, it's part of that economic footprint, ideological footprint, and security-risk footprint. Those companies are building cloud, digital infrastructure, and, not to mention that Tencent is building the blockchain infrastructure for the Chinese government for its cryptocurrency, or the e-renminbi. That is a very strategic geopolitical move on the part of Chinese government, as it tries to decouple from the US dollar. Again, in order to achieve much greater financial independence, they will continue to pursue their geopolitical objectives, including making the renminbi the primary currency of international trade with their regional trading partners. This is part of the much greater geopolitical rivalry that's going on, and so any of these companies, from a techno-nationalist standpoint, are vulnerable, and they are fair game for US sanctions and other export controls.Q: You shed light on the Eastern Asian Currency Initiative in your previous paper. It seems lately China has been ramping up speed testing their cryptocurrency. It will soon expand the trial to other major cities in key areas and ready for launch. How soon do you think we will see the decoupling of the e-renminbi and the US dollar?A: That's a difficult one to answer. It's not going to be that easy, because the US dollar is by far still the dominant currency, accounting for more than 60% in central bank reserves all over the world. But a certain group of countries are supportive to China's efforts to move to a digital currency, that would include the Iranians, the Russians and the North Koreans, and, to a lesser extent, EU companies that have become collateral damage to US sanctions against, for example, Russian entities. Essentially any country that would be subject to US sanctions would want an alternative currency. Since the dollar is the primary currency used in most trade, especially commodities, countries like Iran and Russia, which are rich in natural gas and oil, are stuck using the dollar. If they are using the dollar, that transaction can be traced all the way back to the US banking system. And the US government can impose sanctions on those banks, as well as those parties that are involved. So I would answer that Beijing would decouple from the US dollar as quickly as possible. If they are successful, this will further decouple and drive the world into more fragmented trading blocks. And you have to ask, if a trading block is held together with the renminbi, are the values of the Chinese companies going to be pre-dominant? Most likely that would be the case. That brings a very interesting counter measure from the US, that is: does the US government start to promote using Libra or other convertible currency, because it is directly and freely convertible to the US dollar?The other thing that is interesting is that, if one looks at the business model of the BAT companies, they are innovative not because of unique technologies, but because the technologies they are using are ubiquitous and even built on western open-sourced platforms.We are now seeing social media firms in the US starting to adopt models of their (BAT) payment platforms for all kinds of reasons. They kind of encircle their ecosystems, and have more access to their data, and again, this becomes an issue with the digital currency. When every transaction is becoming digital - everything is done with a QR code - that, again, provides power and control to a central government. It's enormous amount of control, and we run into data privacy issues again. Suppression and denial of people's access to a digital monetary system based on social credit scores, so to speak, in that regard we are going to see more fragmentation of the global financial landscape. The liberal democracies of the world will say, "Look, if adopting digital currency means that citizens essentially give up their rights of privacy, or if they choose not to participate in the monetary system they are marginalized to the point that they cannot participate in the economy," I don't see digital currency becoming the only alternative for democracies. I think you will still see a two-track process where you can do all kinds of things with digital cash, but you still have an option to pay in cash. In some ways that may not be a good thing because you can have black markets, criminal organization payment networks, tax evaders etc. But until a system based entirely on digital currency provides or allows for privacy and choice, we are going to see different emergent systems.Q: Yes, essentially it is an ideological value system diversity issue.A: Indeed, and the monetary system is a belief system based on trust and values. But what we are seeing as a game changer right now is the technology. That changes everything.Q: But is it possible for the US government to develop its own digital currency?A: We will see that. In the US, it will not be a government initiative. It will be through public-private partnership. The government will probably encourage Amazon, Google, or the other FAANG companies, to come up with some kind of universal digital currency. There have been talks about the COVID-19 making the US dollar lose some value. But I think in the long run, there is no alternative. For the digital renminbi, maybe you can see the countries along the Belt and Road, emerging countries in central Asia and parts of Africa, adopting it. We are in super early days of mercantilist competition. The US and the West has just woken up. It is like they got slapped a couple of times hard and woke up to this new reality. Now they are going to alter their behavior. We will see a re-orientation to a much more mercantilist system. That is going to lead to a more fragmented global economy - a fragmented Internet, fragmented markets, more localized production, and so forth.Q: As the US is trying to catch up with semiconductor production, and China is of course doing the same for the purpose of meeting its Made-in-China 2025 goals, can there be over-supply in the future? Do you think they will achieve their goal?A: Yes. US semiconductor companies, in terms of revenues and global share, are now a little more than half of the world revenues. So, they are still dominant in that regard. If you look at the value chain of semiconductors, which is broken into research and development, design, foundry, testing, and packaging, 80% of the value is in the design and the manufacturing portion. Most of the US semiconductor industry has outsourced that manufacturing portion, and the biggest percentage of that is with TSMC and UMC. The trade war and COVID, which further exacerbated the techno-nationalist issues we've been discussing, sort of brought that to light. The US government sees it cannot afford to be vulnerable to having such a big portion of semiconductor manufacturing off-shore to Taiwan.We just discussed all kinds of cross-strait tension, cyber-infiltration, the possibility of sabotage, IP theft and so on. The US is committed to reshoring a significant portion of semiconductor manufacturing. That is now underway. We are in very early stages. It is well-known that TSMC has already pledged to build a US$12 billion in Arizona. But beyond that, there is US$30 billion funding in the first tranche in government spending to get production back to the US. That will happen. That happened before. Go back to the 1980s, Japan became the most advanced nation in terms of semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities. The US responded with a public-private partnership called Sematech. Within 10 years, the US semiconductor industry had leapfrogged. Semiconductor for sure is an industry of strategic importance that is going to be re-shored and re-fenced to a certain degree. Other strategic industries such as pharmaceuticals, will also be re-shored.As for whether the goals of MIC 2025 can be achieved, I think they have miscalculated, and that is a serious example of overreach. China absolutely over-stepped what they were able to. They pronounced this MIC 2025 plan, in which all core industries require semiconductors, and they are a long way from having the capability to produce these semiconductors. And the CCP doubled down and came out with a China Standards 2035, saying that Chinese companies are going to dominate global standards such as 5G. Doing all of these subsequently at the time when militarizing islands in the South China Sea, and imposing national security law at Hong Kong, you couldn't have drawn this up any worse in terms of a foreign policy bungle, given the backlash and the blowbacks we are seeing. So, no. No, I don't think they are going to meet their goals by 2025, not even close, when it comes to semiconductors.But you could look at it another way. This is a 21st century "Sputnik moment" for the United States. And Western Europe is basically saying, "OK, game on!" I would argue, when the US is so paralyzed by its divisive national politics, I can't think of a better way to unite a country, and to come up with a new wave of public-private partnerships, than to name China a new technology and economic rival. This is a new Moon-shot Moment for the West.Q: The Beijing government seems to have done a good job controlling the pandemic and have its economy rebounded from the low, while the US is still in deep water. What can we expect from the future development?A: That is a testimony to the Chinese juggernaut. China has always been good at doing things at scale. They have decades of successful experience in building infrastructure at scale. To see them building those hospitals from ground up in Wuhan, that was an awesome display of autocratic efficiency. No question about that. When the Chinese Communist Party set their eyes on something, they can accomplish a lot. You contrast that to Western liberal democracies, which are, of course, by nature, prone to political paralysis and partisanship. There is, to a large degree, political paralysis like that in the United States. There is no question that liberal democracies have not handled the pandemic anywhere near as efficiently as some technocratic governments in Asia. COVID will provide an interesting lesson going forward, but it would be a huge mistake interpreting it as the validation for the ultimate decline of the United States or the West.There is no question that there will be people in China who look at the United States and say, "These guys can't even manage themselves out of a wet paper bag! Why are we worrying about these guys?" But the real strength of the US will emerge. The US economy and political system is resilient and will survive Donald Trump. It is going to make a comeback and if it needs to reinvent itself, it will. The institutional systems are still sound, and the checks and balances are still working. And you have a wide range of public-private partnerships, which I think will be the key to the 21st century. This is not a top-down, centralized system of government. It's a public-private partnership government, where government plays a supporting and promoting role. But when you throw in the vast US entrepreneurial sector, the open and free market, and the universities, think-tanks and knowledge economy ecosystems, the synergies can be huge.Q: So, no matter who wins in the presidential election, there is no going back for the US-China relations?A: The US-China trajectory would not change with Democrat or Republican winning the election. What will change, of course, if Mr Biden is elected, is a much more organized and articulated policy when it comes to China. That would mean mending fences with allies, and probably building a new coalition to build a new rule-frameworks. We are still at the early, early days with the digital landscape. It requires a new e-WTO, for example. And we also need clearer guidelines around privacy, and all the things we talked about. From a multilateral perspective, we can again see the world fracturing into different blocs, where liberal-democratic countries are members of the multilateral frameworks that promote their own values and non-democratic countries are not going to be a part of that. You cannot separate the application of technologies from those values.Q: But would that mean the production costs for manufactures will go up?A: Yes, invariably there will be instances that represent the Galapagos Syndrome. We probably won't have the same efficiency of markets that we had with fully rationalized, open global value chains. But again, the full global trading system is not sustainable, unless everybody is playing by the rules. And when the world's second largest economy is not playing by the rules, it's not a sustainable system.You have fenced-off ecosystems that are not particularly efficient and could not compete on an international basis if they are left on their own. We saw this happen in Japan in the telecommunications space in the 1990s. Can that happen again? Yes of course. But in a neo-mercantilist world, where it's about the nation state and its interests, or its aligned interests with other nation states around specific values, that's the way it is.

The stay-at-home economy continues to boost demand for PCs and related components such as motherboards and graphics cards with major vendors and makers all expected to see rising shipments in the second half of 2020. However, Taiwan-based backend houses are not as optimistic about the second half as the US' trade ban on Huawei may still influence MediaTek's shipments to the Chinese smartphone vendor. Strong demand for 5G handsets has prompt LTCC makers to expand their capacities in order to satisfy clients' increasing orders.Notebook, mobo, graphic card shipments to sustain growth in 2H20: Taiwan-based vendors of notebooks, motherboards and graphic cards are expected to sustain robust shipment momentum in the second half of the year, driven partly by stronger-than-expected demand supporting the stay-at-home economy and partly by growing rush orders shifted to them as US-China trade tensions intensify, according to industry sources.Taiwan backend houses cautious about 4Q20: Taiwan backend houses are cautious about business prospects for the fourth quarter of the year thanks to upcoming disruptions in MediaTek shipments to China's Huawei under the latest tough trade ban against the Chinese tech group, according to industry sources.Taiwan LTCC makers keen on capacity expansions for 5G: With LTCC (low temperature co-fired ceramic) demand for 5G handsets to grow at least 30-40% from 4G handsets, Taiwan's makers in the segment are actively proceeding with capacity expansions to meet the demand, according to industry sources.

Some smartwatch vendors have adjusted their supply chains, either by switching related suppliers or relocating production bases, to adapt to changing global micro situations in order to sustain the highest amount and stable benefits over the past two years, Digitimes Research has found.Among the top-5 vendors, China-based Huawei and Garmin, whose manufacturing bases are located in Taiwan, have not made much changes to their supply chains, but Apple, Samsung Electronics, and Fitbit are those that have been forced to overhaul their supply chains, including efforts to build manufacturing facilities in India.Although Apple has strengthened its supply chain in China by adding China-based Luxshare Precision Industry into its supplier list for Apple Watch products and Taiwan-based Quanta Computer has opted to reduce its role in the related supply chain, the Chinese maker may not be able to significantly ramp up its Apple Watch shipments due to rising anti-American sentiment in China.Samsung has relocated its panel manufacturing and assembling facilities for its smartwatch products to India to tap the vast domestic demand in the country, Digitimes Research indicates.Fitbit, which ranks second in the wearables segment and has been acquired by Google in 2019, is likely to realign its supply chain deployment as its major ODM partner Flextronics has decided to withdraw from China due to its conflicts with Huawei. As a result, Taiwan-based ODMs may receive more windfall orders from Fitbit.China-based smartwatch brands, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Realme have been less affected by geopolitical situations in the near term as their markets and manufacturing facilities are mostly located in China. These brands have also made significant revenue gains from the India market and have further enhanced their deployments by calling for their supply chain makers to also set up factories in the country.However, the relationships between China and India have become more intense recently, which may undermine the efforts of Chinese brands for further developing their market in India. This may allow Samsung to make more gains in India, reshaping the market share of major brands.

Global shipments of the next-generation iPhone devices (tentatively named iPhone 12 lineup) are expected to total 63-68 million in the second half of 2020, a reduction of over five million units compared to the amount shipped a year earlier for the iPhone 11 lineup, according to the latest forecast of Digitimes Research.The projection comes as the timings for volume production and official launch of the new iPhone series are likely to lag four to six weeks behind original schedules affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Digitimes Research said.However, the pending amount of extra unemployment benefits to be released by the US government could affect the scale of actual shipments of the iPhone 12 lineup by as many as10 million units in second-half 2020.Additionally, if WeChat, a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent, is no longer available on the App Store in China or pre-installed on the new iPhone devices, shipments of all iPhone products in 2020 will be nearly 10% lower than the original estimate of 190 million units, Digitimes Research forecasts.In addition to adding a dark blue model, for the first time, into the iPhone family products, Apple also brings a number of specification upgrades to new iPhones, including camera modules, displays and communications modules.While all new iPhone products will come with facial ID functionality and support mmWave 5G technology, the top-end model of the iPhone 12 lineup will be equipped with a ToF camera and the wide-angel lens of its rear camera will also come with sensor-shift optical image stabilization functionality.Foxconn Electronics and Samsung Display are the major beneficiaries of the iPhone supply chain, as the former remains the primary supplier of smartphone frames and assembler of the new iPhone products, and the latter is the exclusively supplier for a variety of AMOLED panels, Digitimes Research notes.