Digital transformation of the manufacturing sector driven by Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and autonomous driving enabled by Internet of Vehicles (IoV) are key focus areas of today's industrial development and they offer tremendous business opportunities...

As shortages of components continue to haunt the semiconductor industry, LED chipmakers are now looking to raise their product quotes, which will drive downstream LED lighting product vendors to also increase their prices to reflect the costs...

Because of Apple's promotion of UWB (ultra-wide band)-enabled devices, applications based on UWB technology have increased and have a broader coverage, according to Digitimes Research.

Electric vehicle (EV)-use lithium batteries suffer large decreases in operating efficiency when exposed to working environment of very low temperatures, but the problem can be solved by a few methods, according to Digitimes Research's findings.

As demand for semiconductor products has continued picking up, their supply has also grown tighter. Foundries' supply of automotive MCUs, storage controller chips and power management ICs has already fallen short of demand by 25-40%, while HPC, server and 5G networking chips are also seeing insufficient supply of high-end ABF substrates due partly to low yield rates...

SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) is essential to navigation systems of mobile robots and there are various depth sensors used in SLAM including 2D and 3D LiDARs, stereoscopic cameras, laser ToF (time of flight) cameras, radars and ultrasonic radars, according to Digitimes Research.

Smart Home Data Catalog, a platform for collecting data from connected electric home appliances launched in October 2020 by Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), is expected to promote development of smart home services in the local market.

The LCD industry getting so mature that existing players are keen to look for new opportunities and technologies. Innolux's executive VP Chin-Lung Ting has told Digitimes that the company will adhere to TFT-LCD as its core technology, but is exploring a new business model that he calls "panel semiconductor," seeking to integrate a wide range of sectors to cater to non-display applications...

Japan is establishing a nationwide smart logistics platform to collect data about entire delivery processes of selected products from production, transportation, distribution to sales and customers for shared use by producers, logistics operators, regional distributors and retail operators, a bid to hike overall logistics efficiency by 20%.

TSMC has plans to allocated US$25-28 billion in capex for 2021, with over US$15 billion of the foundry house's record budget to be spent on advancing its 3nm process node. The foundry has disclosed that it is on track to move its 3nm process to risk production later this year, and start volume in second-half 2022...