Some may think Moore's Law is reaching its limits, but for TSMC, it is still very much alive. The world's number one pure-play foundry is already conducting 3nm process R&D. TSMC chairman Mark Liu believes Moore's Law will continue to drive semiconductor growth in decades to come, but Taiwan's IC sector must tackle the problem of engineer shortages that could hinder its growth in the future. The shortages will be worsened by aggressive personnel poaching by ambitious Chinese firms looking to cut short their technological development processes.TSMC kicking off 3nm process R&D: TSMC has already kicked off 3nm process R&D, according to Philip Wong, VP of corporate research at the pure-play foundry. And with the evolution of Moore's Law, the company could make 2nm or even 1nm node manufacturing possible, said Wong.Talent shortage facing Taiwan semiconductor industry, says TSMC chairman: Moore's Law will continue to drive semiconductor industry growth in decades to come, but Taiwan's IC sector is in need of sufficient engineers to support its development, according to TSMC chairman Mark Liu.China aggressively poaching talent from Korea, Taiwan chipmakers: China-based semiconductor firms are keenly luring talent away from chipmakers in Taiwan and South Korea by offering much higher pays, seeking to shorten time for technology development and narrow technological gaps with leading players, according to CY Lu, president of Taiwan-based memory chipmaker Macronix International.

Worldwide shipments of smart feature phones running KaiOS are forecast to climb 65% in 2019, with the Africa market being the major growth driver, according to Digitimes Research.KaiOS is the third largest mobile device operating system worldwide. With its successful cooperation with India-based telecom carrier Reliance, the operating system has started expanding into markets outside of India.In 2019, there will be a total of 10 new smart handsets from players in Africa, Indonesia, Brazil and Ukraine that are pre-installed with KaiOS, and the addition of these new phones is expected to dramatically boost KaiOS-based handset shipments in the year, Digitimes Research noted.Smart handsets using KaiOS mostly have similar specifications such as a 2.4-inch display, candybar form factor and 256-512MB of RAM. In 2018, most KaiOS handsets adopted Qualcomm's Snapdragon 205 AP, but in 2019, a majority of new KaiOS devices have turned to solutions from China-based Unisoc.Of the nine KaiOS-based handsets released so far this year, only Energizer Energy 220 series comes with MediaTek's MT6572 processor, while all others are equipped with Unisoc's SC7731 or SC9820E. Sigma Mobile's KaiOS handset will be released later this year.

The global top-5 notebook brands saw their combined shipments rise 5% on month and 2% on year in August, as both Europe and North America entered the peak season, brand vendors started releasing new products and the Intel CPUs shortages were easing, according to Digitimes Research's latest notebook figures.Since the US tariff on notebooks imported from China has been suspended until mid-December, vendors are not in a hurry to advance their orders at the moment, said Digitimes Research.Hewlett-Packard (HP) witnessed an over 10% on-month increase in August shipments thanks to the releases of its new consumer models and strong Chromebook sales. Lenovo also had a slight on-month shipment growth in the month, but its shipments in the next few months are expected to be affected by the deceleration of China's economy.Dell had weaker-than-expected results in the consumer sector, resulting in an on-month drop in the company's overall shipments in August.The top-3 ODMs' combined shipments picked up 6% on month due primarily to Dell and Lenovo ramping up their orders with Wistron, which had the highest on-month shipment growth among the top-3.

With the semiconductor industry entering the era of heterogeneous integration, biomedical electronics applications will definitely be using related technologies for their development, according to chairman of Etron Technology Nicky Lu.Some research firms expect the semiconductor industry's production value to grow to US$1 trillion by 2030 thanks to the maturity of heterogeneous integration technologies, said Lu, adding that Taiwan's IT industry should form tight partnerships with biomedical experts to get ahead of competitors worldwide.At the moment, Taiwan's semiconductor industry is the second or third largest worldwide in terms of production value and generates about US$80-90 billion a year. South Korea's semiconductor industry has a value of US$100 billion and the US US$150 billion.Since Taiwan's medical industry has an excellent foundation and a comprehensive database from the National Health Insurance system, by combining the advantages with its competitive edge in the semiconductor industry, Lu believes, Taiwan will become a top player in the global biomedical electronics industry.There have been many experiments that combine IT technologies with medical care applications such as: using a CMOS image sensor to trigger a visual signal in the brain; placing an electrode on cochlear bone to try to help deaf people regain hearing; implanting chips into patients to detect signal for upcoming epilepsy and prevent it from happening, Lu said.As Taiwan's medical sector has a long history of studying and curing cancers, Taiwan will have a good chance of establishing a precision oncology industry with the cooperation between the semiconductor and medical care industries, Lu stated.Nicky Lu, chairman of Etron Photo: Brian Chuang, Digitimes, September 2019

The US is now the world's largest market for medical supplies and equipment, and Taiwan's healthcare startups and smart medication solutions providers can better tap into the US market with wearable devices for preventive medicine applications, according to Lily Wong, a managing director at PwC Taiwan.Wong cited statistics from the biotech development division under Taiwan's economics ministry as indicating that the US commanded 42% of US$389 billion in annual global market demand for medical products in 2018, with the nation's medical expenses accounting for 17.6% of its GDP, much higher than 6% in Taiwan.Wong said up to 75% of a total of 5,453 hospitals in the US are private ones, which are keen to introduce innovative medical technologies and devices, especially wearable devices for preventive medicine applications that can help reduce medium- and long-term care expenses on the aging baby-boomer generation and chronic patients. While the Software as Medical Device (SaMD) industry is developing rapidly, the US still has to source 30% of its medical supplies and equipment from abroad, with the imports recording a CAGR of 5.5% during 2012-2017. Taiwan ranked 19th with only a 0.8% share of global medical supplies shipments to the US during the period, with the top-five exporters being Holland, Japan, Belgium, China and Canada.Wang indicated Taiwan-based smart healthcare startups and biotech solutions providers can also move to develop innovations on high-end computed tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging systems, for which many US hospitals still show strong buying momentum.

Pre-orders for Apple's iPhone 11 series may be better than expected, but components makers in the new smartphones' supply chain remains cautious. PCB makers say their order visibility concerning the iPhone 11 lineup won't clear up until early October. Meanwhile, one of Apple's major rivals in the smartphone space - Huawei - continues to foray into the 5G market. Unimicron and Nan Ya PCB have increased their IC substrate output for Huawei's devices including 5G network equipment and server chips. PTIPCB shipment prospect for new iPhones uncertain till early October: PCB manufacturers in the supply chain for Apple's iPhone 11 series are keeping a close eye on the new models' initial sales performance, which will determine their shipment momentum for the remaining months of 2019, but the order visibility will remain vague until early October, according to industry sources.Huawei stepping up IC substrate purchases from Taiwan: Huawei is stepping up purchases of IC substrates from its Taiwan-based suppliers, including Unimicron Technology and Nan Ya PCB, according to industry sources.

TSMC's clients reportedly have been eager to secure the foundry's 7nm production ccapacity, as strong demand from the smartphone and for the advanced node has resulted in tight supply with lead time extending. TSMC is expected to set aside more budgets for expanding capacity for its advanced proceees. GaAs foundry Win Semiconductors also plans to expand production capacity in the second quarter of 2020 to meet ever-increasing compound semiconductor foundry demand for 5G applications. For backend service firm ASE Technology Holding, it is ready to provide FO-AiP and FO-SiP packaging services to meet demand from the 5G sector.TSMC 7nm production lead time extended: The lead time for production of 7nm chips at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has extended to nearly six months from the previous two months because of strong demand, according to industry sources.Win Semi to expand GaAs wafer production capacity in 2Q20: GaAs foundry Win Semiconductors plans to expand production capacity by around 5,000 6-inch wafers monthly in the second quarter of 2020 to meet ever-increasing compound semiconductor foundry demand for 5G applications, according to company president Kyle Chen.ASE gearing up for 5G mmWave AiP, RF modules: Leading IC backend house ASE Technology Holding will have its fan-out (FO) packaging technology ready in 2020 at the earliest for volume production of mmWave antenna-in-package (AiP) modules and RF(radio frequency) front-end modules (FEM) for use in 5G devices, according to industry sources.

In a report composed jointly by governmental Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, PwC Taiwan and Taiwan Institute of Economic Research noted that about 20% of startups in Taiwan have not yet generated any revenues, and 50% have. Most of the startups are suffering from losses and only 28% are profitable.The report also showed that diversified capital channels, tax concessions and connection with international market resources are the top-3 major kinds of support that startups hope the Taiwan government can offer. The startups' top-3 target markets are China, Southeast Asia/India and North America.Joseph Chou, chairman and CEO of PwC Taiwan, pointed out that many startup incubation organizations have been aggressively assisting newly formed companies to find the right markets and to enter these markets with their patents protected. So far, failing to be internationalized is the biggest issue for these Taiwan's startups, Chou said.Violet Lo, director of PwC Taiwan's Innovation and Entrepreneur Services, Markets and Business Development, noted that in addition to technology and market development, risk management, regulation compliance, finance control and system establishment are also important factors that startups need to work on.The report also indicated that most entrepreneurships in northern Taiwan are related to smart medical care, digital media, Internet of Things (IoT) and e-commerce, while in central Taiwan, the industries include smart manufacturing, green-energy technologies and new agriculture. For southern Taiwan, green-energy technologies and IoT are more popular.Joseph Chou, chairman and CEO of PwC TaiwanPhoto: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, September 2019

Taiwan startups have come out with a variety of smart healthcare solutions and are stepping up exchanges with leading firms in diverse business segments, seeking to create more cross-industry business opportunities and expand their comprehensive ecosystem.Some of the startups presented their latest innovations at a recent event jointly hosted by Digitimes and Taipei's Department of Economic Development while also conducting exchanges with representatives from major businesses including Taiwan Mobile, FarEastone Telecommunications, PwC Taiwan, HTC, Nvidia and Compal Electronics.Among them, Heroic Faith Medical Science introduced its AI-based early symptom awareness pulmonary monitoring system that can detect patients' breathing abnormalities and collect breathing sound data, helping doctors harness early symptoms of major lung diseases and prescribe early treatments. The system also incorporates AI technology to visualize the collected data and categorize them by disease type, according to company president FS Hsu. AIEplorex's AI high performance computing (AIPHPC) solutions has provided a fundamental architecture for smart healthcare, smart production and smart city applications. The firm's product manager YC Chen said that AIHPC is easy to use, allowing users without program language knowledge to easily build their own AI patterns at lower costs than using other platforms. He stressed that the platform highlights the use of AI to materialize real-time analysis of gigapixel images, able to analyze X-ray images, medical images, tera-pixel images and big data storage and analysis, Industry 4.0 and smart surveillance.Veyond Reality, dedicated to developing innovative VR-based education solutions, has offered a variety of scientific experimental VR solutions to more than 40 high schools in Taiwan through its Vollege. Company CEO Daniel Wang noted that Veyond's VR education solutions have performed well in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and LBE (location-based entertainment) application domains and the company will promote the solutions to 1,000 schools abroad in two years.Beseye Cloud Security has developed skeleton-print analysis technology that can be integrated with cloud AI image identification and big data analysis technologies to provide automated extraction of facial, body skeleton structure and walking posture characteristics to determine a person's age, gender, emotions, and identity.

Components suppliers are naturally eyeing the business opportunities arising from 5G developments, with heat-sink solution providers expecting VC-based cooling solutions to become a mainstream for smartphones in 2020. For PCB makers, momentum from the smartphone sector is picking up faster than that for the base station sector where deployments in China has been dented by the US-China trade war.Heat-sink solution providers to brace for strong sales along with 5G deployments: The development of 5G networks including infrastructures, edging computers and end-market devices will significantly scale up global demand for heat-sink solutions in 2020 and beyond, according to industry sources.PCB makers see stronger momentum from 5G smartphones than base stations: For PCB makers, especially those based in Taiwan, 5G business opportunities from smartphones may outrace those from base stations as demand for the latter has been dented by slowed construction of the stations in China, according to industry sources.