Because of the US-China trade tensions and Intel's ongoing CPU shortages, worldwide all-in-one (AIO) PC shipments are expected to shrink 5% on year to arrive at only 12.8 million units in 2019, a weaker performance than expected previously, according to Digitimes Research's figures.AIO PCs will account for 12.6% of overall desktop shipments in 2019, Digitimes Research's numbers showed.Of the top-4 AIO PC brands, the top-2 brands - Apple and Lenovo - will see sharper shipment declines than others in 2019, while third-place Hewlett-Packard (HP) and foruth-place Dell will both see stead performances.AIO PC ODM Quanta Computer will be hit quite hard as a result of both Apple and HP cutting orders. Lenovo has also reduced its AIO PC orders for its ODM partners Wistron and Compal Electronics for 2019.

Since British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton coined the term "Internet of Things" in 1999, IoT development has undergone several stages including "terminal connection" and "platform analysis" before being integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) into the current AIoT, achieving multiple applications in diverse domains such as smart home, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and smart manufacturing. In future combination with 5G, AIoT will penetrate into more vertical markets faster to generate immense business opportunities by leveraging 5G's broad bandwidth, low latency and huge connectivity.At the IoT Innovative Developments Forum organized by Digitimes during Computex 2019, speakers from many leading firms - from diverse sectors, including cloud service, industrial PC, e-paper, testing and validation service, and semiconductor - provided insights into IoT development.IoT applications cannot be materialized without the combined support of bottom-layer sensors, middle-layer gateways and upper-layer cloud platforms, with every node requiring semiconductor technology to serve as the development basis.Sahil Bansal, senior director of product management at Qualcomm, noted that the firm's Vision Intelligence Platform integrates such elements as image signal processor (ISP), high-speed AI engine, machine learning and computer vision software development kit (SDK), generating more space for imagination about the applications of robots, industrial cameras, wearable cameras and VR cameras.Robert Chang, associate director for IoT market development at Avnet Asia, stressed that hardware devices alone are not sufficient to support whole IoT application scenarios, and therefore his company has been aggressively developing cloud data, AI and IoT PaaS platforms, seeking to build one-stop service niches and help clients accelerate design, development, volume production and sales deployment of IoT products.KiPhone Lin, associate vice president of IPC maker Advantech, opined that the forces of ecosystem partners count greatly in bringing AIoT applications into full play.Kyle Lee, deputy director of IoT PM division at E Ink Holdings, also noted that electronic paper, featuring low power consumption, visibility under the sun, super-wide viewing angle and flexibility, can serve as best displays in many IoT application environments.David Feng, intelligent cloud & edge lead at Microsoft, emphasized that IoT projects are usually very complicated, and comprehensive smart cross-cloud and edge-to-device architectures are badly needed to simplify the complexity.Arvin Ho, vice general manager at TUV Rheinland Taiwan, reminded that IoT device developers must select proper networking technologies or their devices may need to undergo renewed testing and validation processes.In analyzing the evolution of global IoT ecosystems in 2019, Jim Haiso, an analyst at Digitimes Research, pointed out that the ever-expanding cellular networks, LPWA (low power wide area) networks, IEC 62443-4-2 safety standards and IoT platform ecosystems will be a trend deserving great attention.IoT Innovative Developments Forum organized by Digitimes during Computex 2019Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, May 2019

Leukemia is one of the most common cancers. Initial diagnosis and follow-ups are based on the interpretation of flow cytometry results - a gold standard in clinical evaluation of the presence of residual cancer cells - performed by doctors laboriously checking and correlating many combinations of the biomarkers detected on the surface of cell samples taken from a patient, taking up precious time that could be spent on more critical clinical tasks and patient care.Machine learning provides a framework to efficiently identify features - for example, biomarker expression on cell surface - or combination thereof to enable the interpretation of flow cytometry results. AHEAD's "flow" model leverages historical clinical data to dramatically reduce the time required by physician to perform an evaluation of test results - from 20 minutes to seven seconds at 90% concordance rate with physician - providing immediate feedback, leveraging the experience and knowledge of many physicians, which take years to acquire. Through cloud computing, this service can be provided to hospitals and clinics which do not have the expertise in interpreting flow cytometry results.Deep learning models are also being developed, combining both treatment history and past clinical examination data, to provide more accurate prognosis prediction which will guide the course of treatment with greater confidence. This is a substantially more complex problem which must examine and take into account different types of clinical data simultaneously - a task difficult to visualize by human.Founded in 2017, AHEAD is led by key opinion leaders in hematology and experts in artificial intelligence and data science in Taiwan. The AI team is led by Chi-Chun Lee, associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU). The data science team is led by Andrea Wang at National Taiwan University (NTU). NTU and NTHU are both top research universities in Taiwan.Ming Yao and Bor-Sheng Ko at the Division of Hematology and Oncology of National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), led by Jih-Luh Tang at the Tai Cheng Stem Cell Therapy Center of National Taiwan University (NTU), form the medical team providing clinical hematology expert guidance.NTUH, founded in 1895, is a world-renowned medical center and leader in Taiwan's health care industry. With nearly 40 years of experience in practicing bone marrow transplant, it has accumulated considerable amount of clinical treatment experience and data on leukemia. AHEAD was born out of this environment.Taiwan's healthcare industry is renowned for its comprehensive population coverage, high quality healthcare and was ranked 9th in the Bloomberg Healthcare Efficiency Index in 2018. Moreover, high quality AI talent pools and AI research performance in Taiwan are also highly recognized among multiple tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.Taiwan is also in a particularly privileged position, given its tradition in medical research and public health, to play a leading role in bringing smart medicine to the world. AHEAD, drawing its strength from a multidisciplinary team, is actively participating in the vibrant AI healthcare startup scene, further contributing and supporting Taiwan to become the global leader in the smart medicine industry.

New Taipei City is a city bursting with creative talents and innovative energy. At present, New Taipei City has promoted a number of youth startup policies, and established bases including InnoSquare, New Taipei Social Enterprise and E-commerce Base, and New Taipei City E-sports Base.Moreover, New Taipei City government worked with Amazon AWS to establish NTPC-AWS Joint Innovation Center, providing various resources such as venue space, mentor counseling, professional courses, industries connection, capital placement, and international links, to help emerging enterprises and startups grow and upgrade.In the future, New Taipei City will continue to create a more friendly environment on a sound foundation and build a one-stop solution to assist the startup teams with development, creating a comprehensive ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship.New Taipei City sets up the New Taipei Pavilion for the first time at InnoVEX this year. With the theme of smart city, the exhibition will use the activities such as displays, forums, and exchanges to help the startup teams win the favors of the venture capitals, accelerators, and enterprises at home and abroad.The results of this New Taipei City exhibition include Muro Box of TEVOFY Technology, GO+ earphone of FuelStation, the home soap-making machine of LESSDO, the car service platform of IGCAR, the e-commerce data decision making platform of ORDERLY, the AI marketing platform of MemePR, the smart home appliances of Cloudmii, the financing placement platform of GateWeb Information, the augmented reality game of Toii, the AI security camera image analysis platform of Beseye, the IoT B2B overall solution of SoftChef, and the smart healthcare platform of Asia-Pacific Intelligent.Moreover, to link up to international startup resources, New Taipei City will conduct exchange and cooperation with startup and incubation institutions such as the acceleration program Startup GO! GO! from Fukuoka, Japan, and QBO Innovation Hub from the Philippines during the InnoVEX exhibition. Soft landing solutions will be provided to each other, allowing the New Taipei startup teams to create more opportunities for international collaboration. At InnoVEX 2019, New Taipei City's Smart City Pavilion is located at Booth A0505a, Hall 1 of Taipei World Trade Center from May 29 to 31, 2019.

TMYTEK has solved two critical issues in 5G development - lack of R&D tool and expensive OTA testing in the production line - with their mmWave beamformer product, BBox.The flexibility of BBox makes it an excellent R&D tool for antenna designer and protocol researchers. Leading institutes and universities have already used BBox to demonstrate promising technologies such as beam tracking algorithm optimization.BBox can also be a cost-effective 5G OTA testing solution. As an RF probe, beam steering can be easily achieved in BBox to characterize the beam profile and the steering angle of the DUTs."We have talent rarely found in Taiwan startup team. By solving the above issues, TMYTEK believes we can contribute to the world with the technology we're proud of. In addition to mmWave experts, brilliant embedded software and firmware engineers are also in our team. That's the reason we can build our mmWave beamforming technology for 5G communication," Ethan Lin, vice president of TMYTEK, said.TMYTEK, founded in 2014, has been focusing on mmWave active/passive components and system development. Phase array, mmWave circuits, beam control logic, beam shaping & tracking algorithm, and even baseband chipset integration are all in TMYTEK's scope.Last year, TMYTEK won the first prize of CIAT accelerator program with BBox and received recognition from 13 venture capitals.

France's data protection authority CNIL issued an announcement in January 2019 imposing a fine equivalent to NT$1.76 billion on Google for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforced by the EU. Besides traditional information risks facing individual industries, the ordinary people must also be aware of the data safety listed below and associated with innovative industry chains in the emerging digital economy era, namely web services, social networking and encrypted tokens.Web servicesBased on the traffic monetization business model seen in popular web services, many innovation startups have launched a variety of web content for access by netizens and attract them to stay, so that they can utilize personal data of consumers and multiple data accumulated from diverse online behavior to make profits from conducting ads push notification in cooperation with other firms. In the web service access process, the lack of transparency in handling personal data and notification of content that is either too simple or too complicated will lead to major legal disputes and huge potential damages.Social networkingIn various future digital scenarios, the mainstream applications will be ones that allow consumers to do shopping, conduct financial wealth management, enjoy entertainment and arrange transportation through social network platforms. It is expected that both the reliance of global netizens on social network platforms and the boost to peripheral digital applications will intensify. Of course, various digital footprints resulting from such a lifestyle will incur high economic values, which will surely be highly coveted by cyber hackers and should be strongly protected.Encrypted tokenIn line with various forms of digital tokenization trend, startups have recently been keen to engage in related R&D projects. As long as they are in the electronic form, any type of token, whether payment token, function token or securities token, will be exposed to the risk of cyber attacks in the issuance, exchange and storage processes of the token ecosystem. Amid drastic price falls for virtual currencies, the number of cyber attacks through the planting of malware will decline sharply. Nevertheless, extortions using asymmetric encryption algorithms to hijack or affect digital token operations are expected to increase steeply.The Internet era where data was valued more than privacy has gone, and various countries in the world will now establish new global digital economy norms based on diverse data processing, information security and privacy protection regulations. Google still received a huge fine from CNIL ticket though it did not leak any piece of personal data. This clearly motivates startups eager to develop emerging technologies to give more efforts to protect the consumers' rights to know how their personal data is utilized in the future development of digital technologies, in addition to handling basic data security issues such as firewall and encryption algorithms. This is the true lesson to be learnt from the Google fine.(Jason Hsieh is executive vice president and leader of Cryptoassets and Token Economy Taskforce of KPMG in Taiwan)

The first case of initial coin offering (ICO) appeared in 2017, generating much interest and new financing opportunities. But many ICO teams have declared failures or vanished soon after completing fundraising operations due to lack of government supervision. To revive the sluggish market sentiment, industry players have called for regulatory supervision over the securities token offering (STO).In response to the call, Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has announced that it will formulate relevant regulations by the end of June, and it already hosted on April 12 a public hearing session for representatives from the industry, government, and academic sectors to express their opinions on draft regulatory rules.The move received a lot of media attention. Indeed, the FSC is worthy of praise for daring to map out a brand-new bill governing the emerging STO business operations. But since the full text of the draft bill was not available at the public hearing, some of the points may deserve more attention or need to be clearly explained. The following are three preliminary suggestions for the writing of a law in the direction of "developing a sound STO, conducting efficient supervision, and building international connection." It is hoped that Taiwan's STO market can take off and grab future international financing opportunities for STOs.Introducing an additional international STO version to govern issuances by foreign companies or overseas fundraising activitiesThe draft bill available at the public hearing confines STO issuers to companies in Taiwan, excluding offshore firms. As STO technology boasts the trait of facilitating cross-nation fundraising operation, it is advisable that besides the current domestic version of the STO draft bill, an international version should be devised to govern STO issuance by foreign companies or to simply regulate overseas fundraising. The international version must also include relevant procedures such as those for registration to facilitate overall management and help access and develop international markets, so as to effectively boost international visibility of Taiwan's STO developmentMeanwhile, the draft bill stipulates that any dedicated STO investor is required to have a minimum wealth of NT$30 million, but sets maximum STO subscription amount at only NT$100,000. Most attendees at the public hearing regarded the wealth bar as too high and the subscription ceiling too low. The draft stipulations observe the international practices that STOs are less open to retail investors; and to safeguard the interests of investors, the FSC adopts the high criteria for dedicated investors by taking reference from the regulations governing offshore structured products. But the draft bill should also consider flexible credit lines as set for margin trading and short selling of marketable securities. In accordance with different risk tolerance capabilities of different investors, the minimum wealth requirement criteria and the maximum subscription amount can be flexibly adjusted along with risk degrees, so as to fulfill the purpose of protecting investors on the one hand and to develop the securities token-based capital market and attract international funds on the other hand.Clarifying the relationship between STO platform operators and issuersThe draft bill requires STO issuers to channel their issuances through STO platform operators (securities dealers). But what about the relationship between platform operators and issuers - total underwriting or commissioned underwriting? The answer cannot be found from the public information. The draft bill asks, on the one hand, STO platform operators to screen the regulatory compliance by issuers in launching securities tokens on the platforms. And it also allows, on the other hand, the operators to engage in STO trading after completing the screening process by offering quotes based on market conditions to profit from the spread between token buying and selling prices. Do the dual roles played by platform operators contradict each other? Furthermore, the existing draft regulations also blur the boundary between the primary and the secondary STO markets. Accordingly, the regulator should incorporate the role of an intermediary into the draft bill and the relationship between STO platform operators and issuers be further clarified and clearly stated.Innovativeness of financial regulatory sandboxIn case of the STO fundraising amount exceeding NT$30 million, the draft bill stipulates that the issuer must enter the financial regulatory sandbox experimentation, for which a so-called "innovativeness" is required. Accordingly, if there is only one issuer applying for entering the sandbox experimentation, other issuers cannot develop the same or similar business until the issuer completes its experimentation. In order to accelerate multiple developments of the STO industry, the FSC should broaden the definition of "innovativeness" of individual STO projects, so as to allow more opportunities for issuers to meet financial regulatory sandbox requirements.(Kelvin Chung is senior attorney and sub-leader of Cryptoassets and Token Economy Taskforce of KPMG in Taiwan)

Ministry of Science and Technology has announced that its Global Research & Industry Alliance (GLORIA) initiative aims to promote industry-academia cooperation with estimated R&D investment of NT$130 million (US$4.1 million).Under the promotion, National Taipei University of Technology will cooperate with Casetek Holdings and Walsin Technology; National Taiwan University of Science and Technology with Aaeon Technology; Taipei Medical University with Wel-Bloom Bio-Tech; and Feng Chia University with Gain-How Printing, MOST said.GLORIA has also successfully prompted Qualcomm to cooperate with National Taiwan University, National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University in R&D and talent training, MOST noted.With a 4-year budget of NT$2.4 billion, MOST began to implement the GLORIA initiative to boost R&D cooperation between local universities and local or international enterprises in 2016.As of the end of April 2019, there were 18 alliances with 339 members established under GLORIA. GLORIA had attracted total investment of over NT$1.0 billion in cooperative R&D by participating enterprises and trained more than 3,300 experts, said MOST.GLORIA has incubated 48 startup businesses which are in international cooperation with enterprises or academic organizations in the US, Vietnam and Malaysia, MOST said.MOST is showcasing GLORIA achievements at Computex Taipei 2019.

The coming of the 5G era promises drastic changes to people's lives, but all these changes will not come without equipment, device and component suppliers making advances in their technologies and offerings, according to speakers at a Digitimes-arranged forum during Computex 2019.Commercialization of 5G is just around the corner, but compared to 4G, which has been focusing on mobile communications, the scope of 5G applications will be much broader. The 2019 Computex Taipei 5G Mobile Technology Trend Forum, with the theme of "Recreating Industry Values," brought together heavyweight industry experts to shed light on the development of 5G.In his opening speech, ST Liew, vice president of Qualcomm Technologies and president of Qualcomm Taiwan &SEA, noted that smart connection has become an inevitable trend in the future world and that through 5G's traits of high networking speed, broad bandwidth and low latency, digital technology applications will proliferate constantly. He said the world will march toward an era of inventions, with new applications and business models emerging continuously to bring major changes to industries and people's lives. And all these will be based on 5G technologies and solutions offered by various types of businesses.The extended applications of 5G will be extremely broad through the integration with AIoT, and diverse software and hardware technologies required in the 5G application architectures will be sharply different from the past, according to Morris Chen, product marketing manager at STMicroelectronics. He said that for 5G application to both consumer and industrial domains, sensors are needed at the bottom layer of the architecture to detect surrounding environments and equipment conditions and transmit relevant data collected to upper layers. Accordingly, demand for sensors will rise sharply in the future, and their sturdiness and communication capability must be simultaneously upgraded.Besides sensors, memory is also among devices that must undergo constant advancements. Mirian Kuao, senior marketing manager at Macronix, pointed out that 5G base stations are an important area for memory application. As base stations have long life cycles, their components must be highly stable and reliable. Memory suppliers for 5G base stations must guarantee long-term supplies, and their products must operate in wide ranges of temperatures and provide high storage densities.Audio chips are also key components for 5G equipment. As consumers are increasingly concerned about quality and performance of audio/visual products and recreation is also a crucial application of 5G, Dialog Semiconductor has rolled out audio chips that can sharply reduce noises when applied to UC and CE headphones and microphones. For microphone makers, the company particularly offers chip modules to help shorten time-to-market for their products.In terms of communications, frequency bands for 5G applications will be far broader than those for 4G, and system makers need brand-new development kits to support their product designs. In this regard, SW Chang, president of TMYTEK, noted that there are now fewer users of 30GHz mmWave for 5G application, as it involves greater difficulty in technology although it can provide cleaner and faster transmission. Chang disclosed that his firm's 5G beamforming antenna system development kits can help makers more easily develop antennas and test modules and baseband systems.After mmWave devices are successfully developed, test is a crucial job in volume production of the devices, according to John Lukez, vice president of LitePoint. He noted that 5G mmWave is a brand-new technology, requiring simple, reliable and accurate solutions to test 5G mmWave products on production lines. The firm's mmWave testing instrument, featuring tight space design and horn antenna, is available with a laser alignment system that can measure path loss and conduct angularity correction to boost yield rates for mmWave products and secure consistent product quality.At the forum, Daniel CC Lee, director of industrial service group product certification at TUV NORD Taiwan, explained 5G regulations and standards enforced in the US and Europe. Lee said that besides regular security certifications for electronics products, extra information security and function safety are also required for 5G devices to ensure that the entire system can maintain safe operation in case of device malfunction. He advised Taiwan firms to join the 5G mmWave Channel Model Alliance under the National Institute of Standards and Technology to access more 5G-related information available worldwide for use in their product designs.Over the past few years, AIoT applications have gradually emerged, with image identification now still commanding the largest portion of the applications, said Christine Liao, sales director at ThroughTek. Liao stressed that along with the maturing of 5G, its high networking speed and broad bandwidth traits will further drive upgrades in image transmission and identification technologies. Long engaged in the development of image processing technologies, ThroughTek has been well prepared for the arrival of the 5G era, she added.Roger Huang, director of Digitimes Research, said that the US and Korea will start commercialization of 5G services in 2019, while Japan and China will follow suit soon, inspiring major tech firms to step up development of diverse vertical application equipment in addition to smartphones. He concluded that the ever-proliferating 5G applications will usher in ever-expanding business opportunities, and Taiwan firms must speed up their deployments in related aspects to create more value-added services.The Digitimes-arranged 5G forum brings together industry experts.Photo: Digitimes staff

After the iWatch became all the rage, wearable devices have suddenly become the most popular IT product. Companies in the market rushed to introduce various devices, such as smart watches, smart wristbands, and even smart necklaces and earrings, all of which can detect biosignals through built-in sensors. However, most wearable devices share common drawbacks. In addition to inaccurate detection under vigorous exercises like jogging, some medical devices require users to change their lifestyle, which significantly reduced their use rate. SmartFace Inc, led by professor Bing-Fei Wu of National Chiao Tong University (NCTU), has developed a vision-based biosignal health management system to measure and detect biosignals through visuals without contact. The system's accuracy is higher than that required by medical standards and can be applied in medical and financial sectors.The application of wearable devices in the medical sector started early, then the IT industry launched related products, including all kinds of smart wristbands, glasses, and watches. These wearable devices use built-in sensors to detect biosignals, but they lose their accuracy if not aiming at certain parts of the body (i.e. pulse). As for medical grade products that require a high standard on precision, some need to be worn over long periods of time, such as heart rate detectors worn by cardiac disease patients at home or devices for detecting sleep apnea. These devices affect users' daily living. In light of this, Wu focused on precision and easy application as the two major principles when conducting research and development. His vision-based biosignal health management system can accurately detect biological information without users feeling anything.This system first obtains facial information through a camera and then shows the heart rate and blood pressure after the analysis by special algorithms developed by FaceHeart Inc. Accuracy can reach 2-3 bpm when users are inactive, not worse than the medical standards. It can still be use even during jogging on the treadmill. Also, users don't need to purchase a high-precision camera. Heart rate detection only requires cameras with a frame speed of 30 fps, whereas the detection of blood pressure will require cameras with higher specs, but Taiwan suppliers are capable of making both kinds of cameras.The vision-based biosignal health management system of FaceHeart Inc. has diverse applications. It is for users who need to detect biosignals without making contact with the device itself. The system is most commonly seen in elderly care. To take care of elders in the family, some people will purchase devices like smartwatches for them to wear, but the elderly are not familiar with electronic products, which are eventually cast aside without being used. The system from FaceHeart Inc. can have a camera set up in front of the television so the elderly can have their heart rate and blood pressure detected while watching TV.In addition to the medical sector, financial institutions are starting to use the vision-based biosignal health management system. In 2017, Professor Wu's team at NCTU won first prize in the smart financial system competition by the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, Ltd. (SCSB). They then worked with SCSB to integrate it into the Know Your Customer (KYC) system, which companies use to identify customers. Scams are on the rise in recent years. In the past KYC tried to prevent dummy accounts by relying on questionnaires to conduct background checks on customers applying to open new accounts. But SCSB uses the vision-based biosignal identification system, allowing employees to immediately determine whether the applicants passes the KYC procedures, reducing the employees' workload.Both the hardware and software of this health management system are independently researched and developed by Wu's team at NCTU. Even the microprocessing chip comes from the cooperation with Taiwan's MediaTek Inc. It is an AI system that is completely self-made in Taiwan. Professor Wu pointed out that the system is extremely convenient to use, but they encountered many challenges during research and development. For example, they need to figure out how to ensure accurate measurement under circumstances without ample light, such as nighttime or in a dark room. Also, cameras on the market automatically adjust the aperture and shutter. This image also affects the analysis of AI. The R&D team spent 5 years overcoming all challenges and smoothly commercialize this new technology.As for the business model, Wu says that technology will have two directions: One is to authorize the core software to companies so the system can be built into cameras. The FaceHeart Inc. team can customize the software to suit customer products. The other direction is to partner with existing camera companies. For instance, cameras from security monitoring companies can combine FaceHeart's Al system to have more added functions. Wu expressed that incorporating AI into visuals has become a trend in the industry, but FaceHeart does not delve into mass facial recognition but a rather accurate biosignal identification to differentiate its market from competitors and aim for high-value business opportunities in a new territory.