Taoyuan City has been selected by Intelligent Community Forum as one of the global top-7 smart cities for two consecutive times. Cheng Wen-tsan, mayor of the northern Taiwanese city, pointed out during a recent interview by Digitimes that the core mission for a smart city is to solve problems by virtue of innovative technologies to hike efficiency and quality.Taoyuan began to promote its smart city project in 2015 and particularly focused on smart solutions and services for daily life, transportation and tourism in line with the Asia Silicon Valley Development Plan implemented by the National Development Council, Cheng said. Smart city solutions and services are human-centric, using IoT (Internet of Things), big data and AI (artificial intelligence) technologies to collect, analyze and integrate data, Cheng noted.Master plans and innovative thinkingWhile there are many systems and software solutions for promoting smart cities in Taiwan, smart city projects' effects on a city's competitiveness and the improvements to citizens' daily lives cannot be easily assessed because there are no readily available benchmarks, Cheng explained. Therefore, every city should have a master plan as guidance for city employees, giving them clear ideas about smart city, Cheng indicated.The city's Department of Information Technology is mainly responsible for promoting the smart city program. As of May 2018, the department had provided 1,443 items of data collected by the city government, including traffic, residential, vehicle thefts, flood water levels, parking facilities and air pollution attributable to factories, for open use. Since such data originally differed in format, the department has introduced OpenAPI Specification to shorten time taken by internal system developers to use such data. The city government aims to make every in-house-developed system avialable to the public.Citizen Cards are an example of smart city solutions, Cheng said. The card features multiple functions including personal identification, transportation tickets, electronic wallets, entrance control and access to various daily-life services. For mobile electronic payment, the card supports Apply Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay currently.Since it was launched in September 2015, the city government has issued over 1.1 million Citizen Cards, nearly half of the city's population, Cheng said.Industrial parks are under close environmental monitoringThere are six large industrial parks in the city and the city government has deployed sensors to monitor hot spots of pollution and use big data analysis to identify pollution sources.In response to frequent complaints about air pollution, the city government has cooperated with the Environment Control and Hazard Mitigation Technology Center under Chung Yuan Christian University to develop drones equipped with air pollution detectors for real-time monitoring of air quality at the Guanyin Industrial Park as a pilot project.Such drones undertake real-time detection of air pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 every two seconds at varying altitudes and turn out a set of data every 30 seconds, with data transferred to ground monitoring computers via wireless communication for analysis of hot spots of air pollution. The city government plans to match detected abnormal signals with data collected by nearby weather stations and air quality sensors to trace pollution routes and the sources.Smart management of infrastructureCheng said smart disaster prevention is also important. In precaution against flooding, the city government has deployed 61 flood water level monitoring stations and 28 rainfall stations since 2015, and has integrated measurements with flooding data collected by other agencies and developed a flooding information system.The city government has converted many sewer maps into a GIS-based digital database and set up sensors at sewers for cloud computing-based monitoring. So far, map data on more than 15,000 sections and manholes of sewers have been digitized.There are six water resource recycling centers (wastewater treatment plants) in operation in the city, with each equipped with testing instruments and cameras for transferring real-time data on water quality to the monitoring center and monitoring staff's smartphones.The city government has installed 160 smart LED streetlamps for demonstration and will another 450. Smart streetlamps include a lighting control system, data displays, an AI-based image search and recognition system, GPS tracking based on smart wearables, and free Wi-Fi services.Over 200 of the top-500 Taiwan-based enterprises are stationed in the city. There are about 11,000 factories and over 2,000 logistics service operators in Taoyuan. With the Taoyuan International Airport, and the proximity to the Taipei metropolitan area and Hsinchu Science Park, the city has the advantages to develop smart city solutions, Cheng indicated.For Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, the focus is not about moving factories to or selling products in Southeast and South Asian countries, but about establishing platforms for economic cooperation, Cheng explained.The city government will, in line with Taiwan's Asia Silicon Valley Development Plan, introduce more software-based smart solutions, boost Industry 4.0 and upgrade industries' business operation, Cheng indicated.In addition, the city government has been keen on promoting startup businesses: there is a project focusing on communication software via cooperation with the National Development Council; and another on Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and testing autonomous driving, Cheng noted.Taoyaun mayor Cheng Wen-tsanPhoto: Shihmin Fu, Digitimes, August 2018A smart LED streetlamp with mulitiple applications in Taoyuan Photo: Taoyuan City Government

The advent of the smart car era is providing an overtaking opportunity for latecomers that can master domain know-how at the client end and know how to develop profitable product design, packaging and sales models based on the latest market trends, according to Wu Hsueh-liang, professor with the Department of International Business at National Taiwan University.Wu told Digitimes in a recent interview that the communication industry used to be dominated by telecom operators, but later a forked way emerged to allow entry by IT firms. Likewise, smart cars, autonomous cars or electric vehicles have allowed many non-car players to enter the traditionally closed auto market. Wu said that some of his former students in the display industry used to see their companies devote much effort to supplying ever-larger panels for computer and TV applications, but they later turned to developing small-size, car-use LCD panels that can withstand high in-car temperatures of 70-80 degrees Celsius following 7-8 hours of sunlight exposure, which is hard to achieve with larger panels.Among similar niche products, industrial PCs see only a few makers in Taiwan as such PCs involve a certain technological threshold. For an enterprise, Wu indicated, whatever it wants to sell, such as solutions, products, components or raw materials, will entail different business models that are closely associated with profitability, strategies and organizations. Three major elements for solutionsMany think selling solutions will involve higher gross margins than selling components, but they may not know well what constitutes the solutions. Basically, solutions represent a close integration of hardware, software and domain know-how, with none of them dispensable. Among them, domain know-how associated with the client end is the most difficult to grasp. Those who possess domain know-how certainly know well where the solutions will be applied - hospitals, supermarket chains, or transportation systems - as well as the habits of users and their usage environments. Accordingly, they will know how to tune up related hardware and software to achieve the best user interface and experience, as well as operating efficiency, according to Wu.Many Taiwan tech firms tend to supply standardized modules to system integrators, enabling the latter to sell integrated solutions to terminal customers for much higher gross margins. This in turn has prompted the tech firms to transform their business into offering solutions, but the lack of domain know-how has made the transformation a difficult job, particularly for suppliers of IT components. But if led by system integrators, the transformation will become more feasible. Taiwan's Yulon Motor, for instance, can lead some component makers from the electronics and other industries to develop smart cars for global sales, and this will be a more feasible way Yulon can take toward the production of smart cars, Wu commented.For outsiders, Wu opined, the development of new products such as new airplanes will provide the best timing for them to tap into the supply chains as long as they possess leading engine or electrical control technologies and become members of the new plane development alliance.Likewise, Wu noted businesses will have a very good chance of joining smart car development alliances initiated by first-tier automakers once they have unique technologies and boast high international recognition.Front-stage operation capabilityIn the PC era, Taiwan's manufacturers got accustomed to backstage-driven business models, thus developing strong backstage operation capability and high operating efficiency. But in the mobile network era, they have suddenly lost the shelter of major brand vendors, having little idea about where to go due to their weak front-stage operation capability, according to Wu.Wu said that a US documentary film titled "The Merchants of Cool" can present lessons for Taiwan enterprises concerning how to carry out front-stage operations. The film features success stories of some famous US brands such as Nike and Sprite versed in grasping market trends and turning abstract concepts into concrete products. The brands have succeeded in analyzing the consumer trends implied in the catchword "cool" popular with the young generation in accordance with diverse data, and finally turning the trends into highly profitable product design, packaging and sales modes.If Taiwan firms can switch part of their massive investment in backstage operations to market research to learn the "pain and gain" factors of customers, they can start to accumulate domain know-how and know what customers actually need and why.

Taipei's Department of Information Technology, to promote its smart city program, will cooperate with OK Mart convenience store chain to set up a no-cash retail store at the city hall on a pilot basis.The retail store is to let customers experience electronic payments only. It accepts Taiwan's major store-valued cards and mobile e-payment services such as Apple Pay, Line Pay and Alipay, the department said.The department on June 25, 2017 launched pay.taipei, a smart platform via cooperation with O'Pay, JKO Pay and other e-payment operators to enable citizens to pay for roadside parking, water charges, taxes, administrative fees, traffic fines and medical care services at hospitals under the city government.

Co-chairman of SVT Angels and co-founder of Acorn Campus Ventures, T Chester Wang taught college courses in Saudi Arabia and invested in real estate in Silicon Valley before he began angel investing. From investing in real estate to investing in high-tech startups, from investing by himself to founding Acorn Campus Ventures with friends (Wu-Fu Chen and ‎David Tsang) and investing with a group of angel investors, Wang has many success stories as well as bad investments such as the one in eBay made without a real understanding of new business models.Drawing on his experiences, Wang calls on the Taiwan government to leverage Taiwan's strength and focus attention on the development of healthcare technologies while instituting flexible policies to allow exit mechanisms for startup firms so as to foster burgeoning startup developments.If a startup firm fails, the problem is either the market or the startup teamWang spoke frankly that he learned from his years of experiences that it is easier to invest in real estate than high-tech startups. For real estate investment, once you get to know the neighborhood you look to invest in, all you need to do is come up with the capital and find the ideal timing to enter the market. The real estate market operates on a boom and bust cycle based largely on supply and demand. Even if you get caught in a recession, you can wait for a few years and still be able to sell the property. Your biggest loss may be just the interest you have to pay. In contrast, angel investing involves professional knowledge of different industries. Moreover, as you invest in people, a wide range of factors can lead to success or failure. If the deal goes bad, you get zero return.Analyzing Acorn Campus Ventures' angel investment cases, Wang found that startup failures were rarely because they were unable to make the products but mostly because they targeted the wrong market, they failed to stay keen on market conditions, or the startup team had problems. With the US Telecommunications Act of 1996 in effect, new telecom technology companies were burgeoning at the time. Among them, Wang was optimistic about Anda's technology and therefore made an investment. Instead of accepting a merger offer of US$500 million in 2000, Anda wanted to proceed to IPO. Unfortunately, a year later, the 911 terrorist attack caused a stock market crash. The capital market became tight and firms were cutting down expenses by continuing to use existing telecom equipment and calling off their replacement plans, which seriously affected Anda's sales. Unable to make ends meet, the company fell into dire financial difficulty.What Anda encountered was a market problem, rather than a technology problem. You may not be able to avoid unexpected incidents but you can definitely prevent failures due to human factors. Wang thinks the founder plays a critical role in the startup team. It is important whether the founder possesses the characteristics: persistence, willingness to share, focus, modesty and leadership. Can the founder persist through hardships in the process of starting his own business? For example, when the firm has trouble paying employee salary or when product development runs into a wall, does the founder try everything to work things out or does he change direction every time he faces a problem? There will always be new problems ahead even if you change direction.Whether the founder is willing to share the fruit of success also affects team spirit. Some founders are selfish and boss team members around. It is unlikely such teams will succeed. There are also some startup founders who do not handle fame very well. When they get all the media attention and give speeches everywhere, they become so full of themselves that they lose track of what they do best, putting themselves on the road to failure.Taiwan holds advantages in healthcare technologies and traditional Chinese medicineYears ago, SVT Angels had a program to foster Taiwan's startup teams and sent a group of outstanding teams to Silicon Valley for a close look at how American startup firms operate. SVT Angels also helped them develop their projects and products. As one of their mentors, Wang observed that young people in Taiwan have excellent qualities and a visit to Silicon Valley can broaden their horizons.Before they came to Silicon Valley, they avoided talking to people about their startup ideas in fear of disclosing their trade secret. However, the visit to Silicon Valley made them realize that discussing their ideas with people can help them validate market needs, broaden their horizons and open their eyes, said one team member under Wang's guidance when sharing his experience. Enhancing English proficiency is the suggestion that Wang gives to Taiwan startup teams. In contrast to teams from other Asia Pacific regions, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, Taiwan startup teams are not fluent enough in English. The world is flat and competition is more intense than ever before. You cannot engage in profound discussion with people without fluency in English.Excellent teams still need good startup ideas. Wang suggests that Taiwan startup teams work on healthcare technology development. Wang once assisted a Taiwan startup team at Stanford University obtain FDA approval. According to Wang, 70% of investments in the medical field are for development of new drugs. Although Taiwan lacks advantage in this respect, startup teams can still work on small-scale clinical studies. Furthermore, Taiwan's unique national health insurance database also gives startup teams an edge in their endeavors toward healthcare technology development.In addition, traditional Chinese medicine is also an area that Taiwan startup teams can work on. The most popular keyword searches by Americans in Chinese are for information related to traditional Chinese medicine. With clinical practice dating back to 4,000-5,000 years ago, traditional Chinese medicine is a proven science and worthy topic of research for commercialization. Acorn Campus Ventures has investments in a Taiwan-based postpartum meal delivery service firm, which also plans to expand into China and Malaysia, targeting the local Chinese population. The firm is generating good profit.Taiwan has many additional advantages. For example, six degrees of separation (the theory that any person is connected to another by six or fewer acquaintances) works very well in Taiwan, a small society where it's easy to find out if someone is credible and thereby build a trustworthy team. Moreover, with market mechanisms and systems more in line with international business practice, Taiwan can be a reliable partner for international businesses planning to enter the China market, where it may be difficult for foreign firms to quickly establish trust amid its massive market scale and unforeseeable circumstances.Last but not least, Wang advises that to foster a booming startup industry, the Taiwan government should adjust its policies to allow startups to have exit mechanisms, for example, easing control on merger deals. Acorn Campus Ventures invested in Crown Bioscience, a research firm providing services for new drug development. Soon after going public, the company was acquired by a Japan-based corporation for US$600-US$700 million in cash. Although Crown Bioscience was then delisted, the deal gave the founder and investors a sizeable return on investment. More such success stories will spur investor interests in startups and more capital funneled into startups will encourage entrepreneurship. Wang thinks instead of supporting a few companies to go public, the Taiwan government is better off instituting flexible policies to provide startups exit mechanisms or easier merger opportunities."When money flows out of the capital market, it has a chance of flowing back," said Wang.(Editor's note: This is part of a series of interviews focusing on the problems and opportunities that Taiwan-based startups face. The interviewees are venture capitalists and angel investors from Silicon Valley and Taiwan.)Chester Wang, Acorn Campus co-founder and co-chairman of SVT AngelsPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

Worldwide top-5 notebook brands saw their combined shipments (not including detachable models) drop 24% on month in July as they had already completed inventory preparations for back-to-school demand in May and June. Compared to the same month a year ago, the July volume rose 11%, the highest on-year growth in 17 months.Hewlett-Packard (HP) saw its July shipments slip nearly 30% on month, but they still represent a 5% on-year rise. Lenovo experienced an over 30% on-month decline in the month, the worst of the top-5, due to trade tensions between the US and China and the depreciation of China's currency, which has put pressure on the vendor's components purchases, according to Digitimes Reseach's latest monthly notebook data updates.Dell witnessed a shipment drop of 16% on month in July primarily due to a deceleration in its Chromebook procurement orders.The top-3 ODMs' combined shipments decreased nearly 20% on month in July. Compal Electronics remained the largest maker in the month and had an on-year shipment growth of more than 10% thanks to Dell's increased orders.

LuxNet chairman, Hsing Kung, has founded three companies. Among them, SDL was established in 1983, specializing in manufacturing optical communication devices. It was sold for US$41.1 billion 16 years later, awarding early investors a 10,000 times return on their investment. Then, Kung soon started Pine Photonics in 2000, which was acquired four years later. During the same time, Kung also founded LuxNet. Both his own companies and those that Kung had stake in underwent the burst of the Internet and optical communication industry bubble in 2000 and sustained great impact. Kung has tasted both the sweetness of success and the bitterness of failure.Now as a partner of Acorn Campus Ventures, Kung enjoys sharing his experiences on entrepreneurship. He thinks with a good foundation and system, Taiwan should encourage investors to make early-stage investments in startups to spur a burgeoning startup scene.Focus on core business and build up corporate value before burning all the cashThe dotcom boom in late 1990s attracted many people to invest in Internet and optical communication businesses. The bubble finally burst in 2000, causing many companies to go out of business. The venture capital community was busy picking up the pieces and stopped making investments. A firm supplying microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) that Kung funded in 1999 was among those that went belly up. The team that started the MEMS firm actually had quite extensive experiences. The firm was even named by a magazine as the private company with the most potential. Kung also held very optimistic outlook for the firm. However, after the startup team received investment from a large venture capital fund, they asked the team to hire an outside CEO. Both the fund and the CEO were eager to prepare the firm for IPO. Unfortunately, with the dotcom bubble bursting, the firm didn't get to go public and couldn't find a buyer, so closure was inevitable in the end.LuxNet, which Kung established on his own, faced a similar situation at that time. After LuxNet finished the final round of funding in 2001, it encountered the dotcom bubble burst. The startup team decided to move back to Taiwan in 2003 to start all over again. Combining Silicon Valley's R&D strength and Taiwan's manufacturing advantage, not only did LuxNet manage to pull through but it also generated impressive results. Kung said in retrospect that the MEMS firm should have tried to cut down expenses and focus on making core products before it burned all the cash. When a startup gets caught in a difficult situation and the CEO and venture capitalist have different opinions, only the startup team that won't give up can save the day.Having experienced the bubble burst himself, Kung remarked in earnest that a business must focus on what it does best, rather than follow what others are doing. In the startup stage, it must try its best to build up its value - make the product or find the customer before it uses up all the venture capitalist'smoney or else it won't be able to carry on.Competence and a little bit of luck will add up to startup success. After Pine Photonics was acquired, Kung chose to retire and join Acorn Campus Ventures to begin angel investing. Some Chinese engineers on the original Pine Photonics team wanted to start their own business and approached Kung. Kung and Acorn Campus Ventures then helped them found InnoLight, specializing in high-speed optical transceivers, in 2008. As there were already firms producing high-speed optical transceivers in the US but not in China, which mostly imported the products from the US, they decided to set up the company in Suzhou, China.InnoLight got off to a good start. China not only has tremendous market demand but also plenty of engineering talent as well as high-quality and hard-working labor. When Google raised demand for 40Gb/s optical communication devices for its datacenters in 2012, InnoLight was able to beat a dozen competitors and got the project. InnoLight has made itself the world's No. 3 optical communication device supplier in as short as 10 years, with annual revenue reaching US$750 million.Taiwan should leverage its advantages and encourage entrepreneurshipDrawing on past experiences, Kung thinks entrepreneurs should have a clear idea about his company's competitive edge, which may be certain differentiating technologies or intellectual property. This is also the first question that venture capitalists ask. It is not enough for a startup to succeed if it is only targeting an untapped country or market. If a startup team has extensive experiences in a certain field or specific know-how to solve certain problems, then it has a shot at success. Furthermore, the entrepreneur must be willing to share the fruit of success with his team and angel investors, who have taken risks to help bring dreams to reality. Everyone will be keen to fund an entrepreneur with a competitive edge and willingness to share.Amid global competition, Kung suggests that Taiwan-based firms should have a clear understanding of their own strength. Taiwan still has many advantages including the business climate and mature governing system. In Taiwan, you don't need government connections to be able to operate a business. The Taiwan government also places importance on intellectual property (IP) and institutes laws for IP protection, which favors the development of high-tech businesses. Moreover, its stock market is open and healthy, where share prices mostly reflect earnings and profitability in the long run, rather than market speculation. As such, the Taiwan government should leverage these advantages to attract investments and particularly make active efforts toward encouraging entrepreneurship and early-stage investments in startups. Most of Taiwan's venture capital firms are rather conservative. However, only investments during early-stage development can drive a burgeoning startup scene. In addition, academic institutions can also provide more entrepreneurship courses to help students bring startup ideas to reality.With regard to startup ideas, Kung suggests that biotechnologies and medical equipment are suitable areas for Taiwan. Taiwan has many good medical colleges, educating abundant professional talent. Acorn Campus Ventures has stakes in several startups endeavoring in healthcare technologies. Kung, however, focuses his investments in startups specializing in optical communication technology, which is more in line with his own expertise.According to Kung, widespread popularity of cloud computing and large-scale datacenters in recent years has created a great influence on the development of the optical communication industry. Telecom operators and network companies, such as Cisco, generally require optical networks to provide reliable connection. Datacenters, on the other hand, look to speed up data access and thus have higher demand for bandwidth than before. When market demand changes from reliability to speed, opportunities arise. Optical network data rate has evolved from 2.5Gb/s in 2000, 10Gb/s in 2010 to 100Gb/s at present, possibly reaching 400Gb/s in 2019. Kung thinks the optical communication industry still has plenty of opportunities and a great number of startups will keep endeavoring in innovative R&D of related technologies in this area.In addition to technological startups, with compassion for humanity, Kung has been investing in social enterprises in recent years. By fueling energy into the development of social entrepreneurship, Kung hopes to engage more efforts to help change the world.(Editor's note: This is part of a series of interviews focusing on the problems and opportunities that Taiwan-based startups face. The interviewees are venture capitalists and angel investors from Silicon Valley and Taiwan.)Hsing Kung, LuxNet chairmanPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

China-based solar poly-Si wafer makers, facing intensifying pressure from mono-Si wafer suppliers and sharp drops in demand from the domestic market in the wake of a China plan to impsoe stricter control on PV installations, have generally taken measures to cope with adverse conditions. However, Taiwan-based poly-Si wafer makers are much worse-eqipped to handle them.The China makers basically have four alternatives: upgrade to production of special diamond wire-sliced poly-Si wafers that enable downstream makers to produce polycrystalline black silicon solar cells; use existing polycrystal-growing furnaces to produce quasi-mono-Si ingots; invest in production of mono-Si wafers; or withdraw from the market.Since use of special poly-Si wafers to produce polycrystalline black silicon solar cells entails MCCE (metal-catalyzed chemical etching), a wet-chemical technique in surface texturing process, and MCCE will result in serious water pollution, few China-based solar cell makers have adopted such wafers. As Taiwan's environmental protection standards are generally higher than China's, Taiwan-based solar cell makers are reluctant to use MCCE, which is infeasible for Taiwan's poly-Si wafer makers.Quasi-mono-Si ingot production has not reached attractive performance-cost ratios, and no Taiwan-based poly-Si wafer makers have stepped into such production.A few China-based poly-Si wafer makers have decided to invest in production of mono-Si wafers, with GCL-Poly Energy Holdings - the largest in China - being the most active. Since Taiwan-based poly-Si wafer makers have mostly remained in the red for a long time, almost none of them have considered the alternative due to financial difficulties.Withdrawal from market seems the last choice for Taiwan's makers, but none of them have decided to to so. They hope the government can extend help.

A team of Taiwan researchers and an IC design house have jointly unveiled a deep-learning image-recognition AI chip whose production cost could be as low as only US$1.The Mipy chip, conceived by three electrical engineering professors from the National Taiwan Normal University and designed by AVSdsp, enable large-quantity applications for home, car, advertising, education, secutiry, police, industrial and toy products.The university said Mipy is the smallest in size and lowest in cost so far available on the AI market.The developers said Mipy is a cooperative IC placed next to the main controller chip, and can be easily built into any PCB that has a primary audio-video processing function.

Taiwan players have unveiled their first set of self-discipline rules for virtual currency exchange houses, with the regulations mainly focusing on how to enhance regulatory compliances set by competent authorities concerning anti-money laundering practices and personal data protection, so as to help Taiwan boost its anti-laundering performance rating by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG).The rules were jointly announced by Parliamentary Union on D-Nation, General Chamber of Commerce of the ROC, Apac Blockchain Development Association (ABDA) and several virtual currency exchange houses under the association including Bitfinex, BitoEX, BitPoint, Cobinhood, KTrade and Tide Global Exchange Technology.In her capacity as president of the Parliamentary Union on D-Nation, lawmaker Karen Yu said that with the rollout of the self-discipline rules governing the operations of virtual currency exchange platforms, operators of the platforms can build a solid basis for dialogues with the Financial Supervisory Commission to develop a new financial management model in the digital era.ABDA chairman SW Liao said that the rules will be updated and revised constantly based on opinions contributed by the government and the public, adding that blockchain governance, government supervision and self-regulation by firms can complement one another.Liao stressed that through the self-regulatory practices, virtual currency exchange houses and technology specialists under his association can help the government better enhance anti-money laundering and counter terrorist finance.

Worldwide server shipments - based on the number of motherboards delivered - reached 3.84 million units in the second quarter of 2018, rising 9.6% sequentially, according to Digitimes Research's latest updates to its findings.Digitimes Research originally estimated second-quarter 2018 worldwide server shipment growth at 8.8% sequentially, but latest information from the supply chain has resulted in an upward adjustment to 9.6%.As for the third quarter of 2018, global server shipments are now expected to pick up another 15.5% because of seasonality, according to Digitimes Research's latest quarterly report about the server industry.The top-3 server players worldwide - Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Super Micro - all enjoyed sequential shipment growths in the second quarter, while among datacenter players, Amazon had the strongest demand and the highest sequential shipment growth.In the second quarter, Taiwan-based server makers' combined share of worldwide server shipments increased slightly to 91.2% from a quarter ago. Inventec remained the largest supplier, accounting for over 20% of Taiwan's overall server shipments, which amounted to 3.5 million units in the second quarter.Inventec's performances and share in Taiwan's shipments are expected to continue to improve in the third quarter, Digitimes Research estimates.