The establishment of a charging station standard is necessary for a market to see broader adoption of electric cars, according to Jacques Borremans, head of Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN) Asia.He noted that without a finalized standard, Taiwan will continue to see stagnant acceptance of electric cars.Prior to 2017, overall installment of electric car charging stations in South Korea had had difficulties surpassing 500 units, but the number went up to more than 1,500 units in 2017, and has been growing rapidly since the government adopted CCS1 as the standard in 2016.Borremans pointed out that people show more confident in buying electric cars after seeing the broad installation of charging stations. Citing South Korean government data, he noted that the number of electric cars registered in the country was 10,855 units at the end of 2016, and went up to 25,108 in 2017 and 55,756 in 2018.At the moment, Taiwan still does not yet have a standard for electric car charging stations and most charging stations in Taiwan are equipped with multiple charging adapters, which significantly increase the costs for establishment.The availability of charging stations is crucial to the electric car market.Photo: Digitimes file photo

Notebook ODMs have again been hit by Intel CPU shortages. But Bob Swan, visiting Taiwan for the first time as Intel's CEO, said his company is expanding production capacity, particularly for 14nm processors. Swan noted that Taiwan has played a critical role in helping Intel go through 2019, a year considered a difficult one for semiconductors. And indeed, Taiwan's semiconductor sector has been spending more on chipmaking equipment purchases this year, despite the US-China trade war, which has been sending manufacturers moving their production lines out of the "world's factory." Now Google is having its manufacturing partners set up production lines in Thailand and Vietnam.Intel expanding chip output: Q&A with company CEO Bob Swan: Intel will be gradually expanding its foundry production capacity, particularly for 14nm process this year, according to company CEO Bob Swan. Swan and other Intel executives arrived in Taiwan earlier this week meeting with local partners and suppliers.Taiwan sees significant rise in chipmaking equipment imports: Taiwan's imports of semiconductor equipment shot up 65.1% on year to US$2.5 billion in September and surged 32.2% to US$15.5 billion for the first three quarters of 2019, according to customs statistics.Google suppliers to relocate production to Thailand, Vietnam: Google has decided to choose Thailand as the new production base for its Google Home smart speaker with Quanta Computer remaining its manufacturer, and the Internet service giant is now reportedly considering moving the production of its Chromebooks to Thailand and Vietnam to avoid the US tariff, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Texas Instruments is revamping the way of selling its products, relying less on distributors. TI earlier this month decided to terminate Avnet's rights to distributing its products starting 2021, and Taiwan-based WPG and WT Micro have just disclosed their distribution partnerships with the US client will also end at the same time. Meanwhile, Apple stands a good chance of leapfrogging Huawei to second place in global handset vendors rankings in fourth-quarter 2019, thanks to significant sales for the iPhone 11 series.WPG, WT Micro to discontinue sale of TI products: Taiwan-based IC distributors WPG Holdings and WT Microelectronics have disclosed that they will discontinue their Texas Instruments (TI) chip and component offerings starting from 2021 after the US firm terminates their distribution rights.Apple likely to outrace Huawei in smartphone shipments in 4Q19, says sources: Buoyed by brisk sales of the iPhone 11 lineup, Apple is likely to outrace Huawei to recapture second place in the global smartphone vendor ranking in the fourth quarter of 2019 after losing out to the Chinese rival since the second quarter of 2018, according to market watchers.

Global tablet shipments are expected to slip dramatically on year in 2019 amid weakening demand for brand and education tablets. Sales of white-box models have been significantly undermined by brand-name devices, while demand for small-size white-box tablets will continue to slip in the next five years, according to Digitimes Research's 5-year forecast report on tablets.Apple's iPad series, which accounts for the largest portion of the brand-name tablet shipments, may not receive upgrades as keenly as before in the next few years, while iPads' price cuts are only having limited effect on stimulating demand, Digitimes Research noted.Global tablet shipments will see difficulties remaining at above 130 million units in 2020. After 2020, the global tablet market will become a sector of rigid demand with shipments to shrink 2-3% every year, and by 2024, it will be difficult to keep volumes above 120 million units.White-box tablet shipments will remain weak in 2020 as most makers' key products are small-size tablets that have been cannibalized by large-screen smartphones and Amazon's inexpensive tablets. Since many white-box tablet makers have started turning to manufacture non-tablet products and customized tablets, more makers are expected to quit the regular tablet business in the next few years.Shipments of tablets with above 10-inch display or using an in-cell touch solution will rise dramatically in 2020 as Apple has replaced its inexpensive 9.7-inch iPad with a new 10.2-inch one, while panels makers have been keenly promoting their in-cell touch solution with advantages in production and pricing to replace GFF one.Microsoft's Windows-based tablet shipments are expected to grow exponentially in 2019 and will see its shipment share rise to 5.2% by 2020, trailing closely behind Lenovo.

Global shipments of small- to medium-size TFT LCD panels are expected to total 1.8 billion units in 2024, representing a CAGR of minus 4.4% from the levels seen in 2019, Digitimes Research estimates.Shipments of handset panels (including LCD and OLED) - the largest segment for small- to medium-sized applications - will grow at CAGR of 0.07% during a 5-year forecast period from 2019-2014, according to Digitimes Research.But LCD handset panel shipments alone during the forecast period will show a CAGR of minus 7.2%, as shipments of AMOLED applications will continue to grow and account for 50% of global handset panel shipments in 2024.More AMOLED panel production lines at major display makers, particularly those in China, will gradually come online during 2021-2022, which in turn will result in a 10% on-year reduction in output of LCD handset panels during these two years.Digitimes Research believes that the rise of industrial control, automotive and other IoT applications in the fields including smart speakers and white household appliances will become the growth driver for small- to medium-size panel shipments at a time when the markets of a number of portable consumer electronics such as handsets, tablets, digital cameras, handheld games and portable navigation devices (PNDs) have become mature or even begun declining.

Preparations for the year-end shopping season and extra inventory build-ups at clients to avoid extra US tariffs are heaping strong pressure on notebook ODMs who are not receiving sufficient support from Intel. They thought the Intel processor shortfall had eased, only to find out that 14nm Intel CPUs are again falling short of demand. The PC CPU maket has been dominated by US suppliers, but in the mobile processor market, Taiwan-based MediaTek has a strong presence. Now China's move to reduce reliance on US supplies is giving MediaTek an even stronger role in the 5G market.Notebook ODMs scrambling to secure Intel 14nm CPUs: Notebook ODMs are scrambling to secure supply from Intel for its 14nm CPUs that have again been hit by shortages ahead of the year-end holiday season, according to industry sources.Chinese drive to de-Americanize supply chain seen as black swan for 5G chips market: China's de-Americanization campaign, a move aimed at cutting reliance on the US suppliers of crucial semiconductor components and technologies, has emerged as the largest black swan affecting the development of the 5G chips market in 2020, according to industry observers.

Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.8% during a 5-year forecast period from 2019~2024, driven by replacement demand for entry-level smartphones in emerging markets and commercialization of 5G networks, according to Digitimes Research.Smartphone shipments will start recovering in 2020 and forward after two consecutive years of declines in 2018-2019, with prospects to reach over 1.5 billion units in 2022 and 1.6 billion units in 2024, Digitimes Research estimates.Samsung Electronics, Apple and Huawei are poised to serve as the top-3 smartphone vendors in 2020, while Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo will rank fourth, fifth and sixth in consequent order with each posting a growth ranging from 5-9% in the year.Accumulated shipments by the top-6 vendors will grow 5.1% on year to over one billion in 2020 with their combined marker share edging up 0.6pp as compared to a year earlier.Shipments of 5G-enabled smartphones will be less than 10 million units in 2019 and will expand nearly 20-fold to 175 million units in 2020, Digitimes Research estimates.Along with the increasing penetration of 5G networks and popularity of related 5G services, prices of 5G phones will continue to decline over the forecast period and will eventually ramp up the ratio of 5G models to nearly 50% of global smartphone shipments in 2024.

The server industry is having a weak 2019 due to high inventory levels at clients, but global server shipments are expected to grow around 5% on year in 2020 as clients' inventory disgestion has almost reached an end. There are three major factors driving the server market from 2019 to 2024: more enterprises have begun pushing for digital transformation, AI applications are growingly popular and cloud datacenter firms are eagerly promoting hybrid cloud systems, according to Digitimes Research's latest 5-year server forecast report.Surging 5G data transmission volumes are also expected to boost server demand starting 2023.Global server shipments are expected to see a CAGR of 6.5% from 2019-2024 with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Facebook all planning to establish new datacenters worldwide, eyeing the potential demand, Digitimes Research's data shows.As cloud computing services have become common, multiple cloud management and hybrid cloud platforms have become a new battlefield among server players. The players have also been unveiling their hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) products that highly integrate servers' hardware architecture with virtualization technologies to cut down costs and time for clients learning heterogeneous resource integration.HCI has already become a technological development trend of the server industry, while many have started connecting their software defined datacenter (SDDC) with HCI as a way to assist enterprise to conduct digital transformation.To achieve a higher AI computing efficiency, chipmakers are looking to divide related chips into two different categories: training and inference, and the move is expected to separate AI-specific servers into two different specification settings.More enterprises are expected to choose to use AI-specific servers to develop their AI models due to concerns over costs and security and with 5G to come online in the near future, demand for AI-specific servers is expected to surpass that for AI model training servers between 2020-2022.In terms of network data processing capability, the server market currently has two different markets: large-size datacenter and standard enterprise with both having 25GE as the basic network speed. As AI applications and multimedia and game streaming are becoming popular, large-size cloud computing datacenters are mainly seeking stability and high expansibility, making SerDes (serializer/deserializer) interface a new spec standard.The network speed of 400GE has already been applied in large datacenters at the moment and 800GE is expected to become available by 2021. For regular enterprises, demand for 100GE is currently rising stably.

It is not just application processors vendors that have been scrambling to secure production capacity for making their 5G offerings at TSMC's 7nm node, which is also catering to AI processors developers, such as Nvidia, Xilinx and Bitmain. Earlier this year, a cloud was hanging over the world's top foundry house amid global economic uncertainty that dampened demand, but strong demand emerging later for its advanced manufacturing processes has now promised a fruitful year for TSMC in 2019. A major driving force for TSMC's strong growth momentum is 5G applications. And within the 5G chip segment, the sub-6 GHz standards are expected to gain much traction in China. TSMC 7nm process attracts multiple orders for AI processors: TSMC with its competitive 7nm process technology has obtained orders for made-for-AI chip processors from Nvidia, Xilinx and Qualcomm, and a number of China-based vendors such as Huawei, Bitmain and Alibaba, according to industry sources.TSMC to post record 2019 revenues: TSMC is expected to see its third-quarter revenues rise and post another sequential revenue increase in the fourth quarter. The anticipated rebound in revenues during the second half of 2019 will likely allow the pure-play foundry to enjoy another year of record-high sales, according to market sources.Demand for sub-6 GHz 5G chips to gain momentum: Global demand for 5G chips supporting the sub-6 GHz standards is likely to gain momentum as telecom operators in China, which has the potential to become the world's largest market for 5G phones, have given the priority to the development of related sub-6 GHz technology instead of mmWave one, according to industry observers.

The Industrial Development Bureau has started operation of AI Hub, a web-based one-stop AI application platform that is part of the 4-year (2018-2021) Taiwan AI Action Plan, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).There are 16 industry associations and organizations, 72 AI startup businesses and nearly 600 enterprise users of AI solutions participating in the hub, MOEA said.The hub provides three core services: Needs assessment (web-based questionnaires are used to understand enterprise users' AI application and thereby assess their AI capability, diagnose their problems and make recommendations.); solution marketplace (AI solutions available in Taiwan are are collected to let enterprise users search for needed AI solutions and try online AI algorithms to help them apply AI to business decision making.); and service on demand (AI start-up businesses and experts provide consulting services to meet enterprise users' demand, including proved cases of AI application.).The hub is an innovative AI ecosystem to boost industries' smart operation and development of AI application in Taiwan, MOEA indicated. Small- to medium-size enterprises and companies in traditional manufacturing are target users of AI Hub at present.AI Hub inaugural ceremonyPhoto: Michael Lee, Digitimes, October 2019