Compal Electronics overtook Quanta Computer as the top notebook ODM in the second quarter of 2018, thanks to increases in orders from Dell and Acer, according to Digitimes Research.The difference between the top-two ODMs' shipments was less than 700,000 units in the second quarter, but the gap will widen in the third quarter when Compal's shipments are expected to break the 10 million mark, data from Digitimes Research's newly published quarterly report about the notebook industry show.Despite a cut in orders from Dell, Compal will see a dramatic ramp-up in orders from HP in the third quarter, the research report discloses.But Quanta's shipments are expected to also rise above 10 million units in the fourth quarter thanks to orders for Apple's new inexpensive notebooks. Quanta will remain in second place, but its race with Compal will be much tigheter in the fourth quarter, with the difference to naorrow to less than 100,000 units.After registering a flat volume of 38.12 million units in the second quarter of 2018, global notebook shipments are estimated to pick up gradually and resume a single-digit annual growth in the fourth quarter, with overall second-half 2018 shipment numbers to inch up 0.9% on year, according to Digitimes Research's latest report.

Power supply product maker Mean Well is seeing steady growth in sales from the industrial power sector - a sector that it has been working in for over 30 years - as more factories switch to automated manufacturing. The company's LED drivers business has also witnessed staggering increases in orders from the consumer lighting, plant lighting and medical care equipment segments. The firm currently is staying firmly as one of the top-tier power supply makers worldwide.Digitimes recently visited Mean Well to talk to the company's executives: Yvonne Chen, marketing manager of Marketing Department; Alfie Yu, regional manager of Sales Department; and Alex Tsai, director of Marketing Department, to talk about the industrial power industry's current status and Mean Well's operations.Q: What products does Mean Well sell? What kind of business model does the company have?Chen: Mean Well was founded in 1982 and is a company primarily focusing on supplying own-brand standard LED drivers and power supply products for industrial applications. At the beginning, the company was an OEM/ODM service provider, helping to manufacture PC-use power supply devices for brand vendors, but it turned to the industrial power supply market after four years and created the Mean Well brand in 1986, as it expected better business potential in the area.Currently, Mean Well has around 500 licensed distributing partners worldwide and 70% of Mean Well's revenues are generated by these partners, while the remaining 30% are earned through the company's direct account.Yu: The LED driver is currently the largest product line of Mean Well, surpassing the industrial power supply, which was the company's main revenue contributor 10 years ago.Q: How is Mean Well's industrial power business performing? How is the business' outlook?Yu: Most of Mean Well's industrial power products are for automation applications and can be applied in places such as factories, equipment and power rooms. Unlike our LED driver business, which enjoys a rapid rise catching the tailwind of market's surging demand, Mean Well's reputation in the industrial power supply industry was slowly earned through clients' positive feedbacks.LED drivers currently contribute 40% of the company's revenues, while industrial power products account for 30% and emerging applications including gaming, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, occupy the rest of the 30%.Tsai: Demand for industrial automation and IoT devices is on the rise, and Mean Well will continue to benefit from the trend as these machines will require more sensors and communication modules to function, translating to more demand for power supply products for these components.Although Mean Well's industrial power supply business is not seeing a surging growth similar to that of the LED driver, the company will continue to experience stable revenue growth from the business since the industry is always seeing the emergence of new technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI).Q: What is Mean Well's status in the LED driver market?Chen: According to a research firm's figures about 2017's LED driver market, Mean Well was the second largest LED driver supplier worldwide with a 6.6% market share, behind only Phillips.Yu: Mean Well's advantage in the LED driver business is at its medium-to-high-wattage product lines. Demand for our above-100W drivers is especially strong due to their competitive price/performance ratios. We are currently developing an above-1000W driver, which is scheduled to be released in the near future.We also cover small-wattage products, but the sector is not one of the priorities of our current operation as it has already become a battlefield of fierce price competition.Another advantage Mean Well has in the market is that we are able to provide LED drivers that meet the regulations of different markets as each market may have different rules on power products. Our products also feature in-house designed power efficiency technologies to help client save costs.Mean Well was one of the earliest players in the LED driver market, launching its first product in 2006. The years of experience in the development of the product line have given us a competitive edge.Tsai: The LED market has been growing rapidly for the past few years with demand initially coming from governments' infrastructure projects such as streetlight installment, and then gradually penetrating into the consumer lighting segment.Despite the fact that consumer LED lighting products have been enjoying strong sales, the growth will eventually slow down because of LED's slow replacement demand as a result of its long product life of at least five years. To avoid the risk, Mean Well has been actively pushing its products to non-consumer areas including automotive and biotechnology.For the biotechnology industry, Mean Well is seeing strong orders for plant lighting applications from North America and Europe and has seen our LED drivers being adopted in medical care applications.Since plant lighting systems are usually required to be in operation 24 hours a day to keep the plants under steady temperatures, related players need to have reliable LED drivers with high wattage output that can work steadily and are power efficient. Mean Well's expertise in the LED drivers is able to satisfy these players' demand in product quality and stability and we expect the business area to have a strong potential in the long run. We have already received many inquiries for our upcoming new high-wattage drivers from plant lighting clients.Q: What are Mean Well's main target regions? What new markets does Mean Well plan to expand into?Chen: China is currently our largest market, accounting for 45% of Mean Well's revenues, followed by the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region with a revenue proportion of close to 30% and Pan America 13%. The rest is from Asia and Taiwan.However, around 50% of our power product shipments to China are later transported to Europe and North America in our clients' final products such as lighting devices or automation equipment.Because of the high revenue share from China, we have been pushing expansions, aiming to boost our sales from other markets to lower the risk. For 2018, we are targeting several emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, as well as South Korea for the expansion plan and have increased our effort in these markets' operation.Tsai: Mean Well currently has distribution partners in all of the markets we have entered and is planning different business strategies for each region depending on their specific characteristics, to widen our reaches.Q: Is Mean Well developing products for any new applications?Yu: We have seen increasing orders for emerging applications such as IoT devices and gambling machines and also orders for power supplies used in arcade stores' claw machines and game consoles.However, Mean Well does not have a specific product line for these particular applications so the clients usually procure power supply devices from our existing industrial power series for their needs.Mean Well executives: Alfie Yu (left), Yvonne Chen (center) and Alex Tsai (right)Photo: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, August 2018

Taiwan-based TUL, specializing in AMD graphics cards, has announced a move to team up with National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) and regtech (regulation & technology) specialist venture platform QRC Japan to jointly develop blockchain and IoT technologies and applications and cultivate blochain talent.TUL president Ted Chen said Taiwan's IT industry boasts strong hardware manufacturing prowess and excellent R&D talent, and the integration of blockchain and IoT involves unlimited application potentials and technological coverage, providing the best turning point for Taiwan industries to carry out digital transformation in the big data era.Chen continued that as a top science and tech academy in Taiwan, NTUST has been dedicated to cultivating high-end tech engineering and management talent, having amassed abundant experiences in handling research projects in cooperation with top international tech colleges and enterprises. QRC Japan, Chen added, has been well experienced in developing blockchain technologies, offering blockchain training programs and providing regulatory advices.Chen stressed that through cooperating with NTUST and QRC, TUL hopes to effectively nurture blockchain-related talent, develop blokchain applications to image processing, biomedical and AI high-performance computing fields, and build connections with international blockchain stages. As crypto mining graphic cards will no longer serve as a main growth driver, TUL now focuses more on such product lines as high-end gaming graphic cards, industrial-control graphic cards, SoC motherboards and FPGA solutions, with its customized industrial-control graphic cards well adopted by major IPC makers, according to Chen.

Long noted for stringent computer system security management, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) recently unexpectedly suffered a virus infection at part of its fab tools and computer systems, fueling concerns of how enterprises address similar network security problems in the era of Internet of Everything, particularly industrial IoT (IIoT) and smart manufacturing operations.TSMC has stressed that the virus infection incident was mainly caused by human errors seen in the process of software installation at new fab equipment. But for companies - whether the virus is spread to internal computer systems due to possible hacker attacks during system installation; or erroneous software installation at new tools; or whether the virus is spread to private cloud systems to various fabs due mainly to improper operation by internal engineers and their failure to fix it immediately - the key point is how to figure out effective ways to stall external hacker attacks and tackle possible internal network security problems.In a single machine operation environment, once any single machine malfunctions, only that particular machine has to be shut down, repaired or replaced. But in the IIoT world, whether in the open Internet environment, semi-closed or fully-closed intranet environments, any small virus can be immediately spread to all networks through any single machine, equipment or system connected to the networks, paralyzing the operation of the networks or generating new parameters to affect production. Such potential risks may arise from poor internal operation, usage and management practices, in addition to hacker attacks from outside networks.For most manufacturers, they would face much larger risks than TSMC from incorporating fully digitalized and networking IIoT environments, especially now that many IIoT platforms highlight open-type platform architectures in addition to networking and digitalization.TSMC's virus infection incident should be a lesson for manufacturers about security issues facing the future development of the IIoT industry - although that should not deter them from embracing that future.Nevertheless, if it is an irreversible trend for manufacturers to march toward the development of IIoT operations and the danger of hacker attacks or virus infection will not disappear at all, then how to prevent, stall, eliminate and tackle diverse hacker attacks and virus infections will actually create a new "blue ocean" market that one may want to invest in.

Taiwan AI Startup Appier has announced that it will move to acquire India marketing automation startup QGraph as a wholly-owned subsidiary to be renamed AIQUA, in a bid to deepen its AI application deployments and help enterprise clients accelerate digital transformation and commercial automation process.Appier co-founder and CEO CH Yu said that the AIQUA marketing automation platform will be a cloud-based self-service marketing automation mechanism, able to integrate user's footprints of connections with other web sites and mobile apps to facilitate collection and transmission of customized personal information.Yu said that the AIQUA platform can support multiple marketing channels, allowing enterprises to conduct comprehensive marketing via various outlets such as websites, communication apps, short text messages, and emails to avoid data fragmentations.He stressed that after incorporating the technology and market strengths of QGraph, Appier's AI-based marketing automation platform will boast an even more comprehensive service scope and broaden the firm's customer bases. QGraph, founded in 2015, mainly distributes highly personalized content and information to Southeast and South Asian clients including India developers of apps such as Zee5 and Paktor, and India's largest fashion jewelry retailer Voylla.Since its inception in 2012, Yu said, Appier has extended services to more than 1,000 brands and agents such as Nike, Disney, Ford, and Starbucks, utilizing AI to help them accelerate digital transmission and commercial automation.The company now has more than 300 employees serving at 14 footholds mainly in Asian cities, including Taipei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Osaka, Sydney, Ho Chi Minh City, Manila, Hong Kong, Mumbai, New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, and Bangkok.

The just-concluded annual Taipei International Industrial Automation Exhibition saw a major gathering of industrial robot brands from around the world, showcasing a variety of robots able to make coffee, tie shoelaces, pack gifts and serve as casino dealers in addition to working at production lines.The world's top-four robot makers ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa Denki and Fanuc were all present at the show. Many of the top-20 brands in the sector were among first-timers at the fair, including Seiko Epson, Omron, KHI and Denso from Japan, as well as Universal Robots, Staubli and Comau from Europe. Taiwan robot supply chain partners such as Hiwin Technologies, Toyo Automation, and Delta Electronics were also among exhibitors.Market watchers said the robots are mainly designed to address the labor shortage issue and their development trend will therfore focus more on small loading capacity, collaborative operation and high precision.In line with the trend, Taiwan's Solomon Technology debuted Meca500 ultracompact six-axis robot arm introduced from Canada startup Mecademic at the show. Built with precision machined aluminum and zero-backlash gearboxes, the Meca500 is now claimed to be the most precise six-axis robot arm, boasting a repeatability precision of 5-micron, a weight of 4.5kg and a payload of 0.5kg.The miniature robot arm can be used to handle precision assembly, testing and inspection, and microprecision positioning at many industrial sectors including electronics, semiconductor, watchmaking, pharmaceuticals and healthcare.Japan's KHI showcased its latest lightweight robot arms RS007L and RS007N, both with six-axis vertically articulated designs, suitable for assembly, material handling, and machine tending applications at an operating speed of nearly 40FPM, the highest for lightweight robots.Seiko Epson displayed the industry's first robot integrating AI, 3D vision and force sensors, codenamed WorkSense W-01. The autonomous robot's two seven-axis arms can move like human arms, able to perform delicate assembly, transport, and other tasks that require human-like force control to avoid damaging objects.

The automotive industry optimistically expects Level 3 autonomous vehicles to become mainstream by 2020. Level 3 self-driving cars enable drivers to take their hands off the wheel and feet off the pedals. Level 4 systems can take full control, allowing drivers to take their eyes off the road. However, it may still be hard to believe for most consumers. Self-driving cars will need to have more control on road conditions and enhance their machine learning performance so that they are able to gain more public trust.Nevertheless, new business models for the commercialization of autonomous vehicles are burgeoning and grabbing market attention, such as self-driving service Robo-Taxi. The development of self-driving cars will no doubt bring revolutionary changes to the automotive market. Industry analysts mark two noteworthy checkpoints - Level 3 self-driving cars hitting the road by 2020 and fully autonomous driving by 2025.With two years to go until 2020, the industry has been gearing up its preparation for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and Level 3 autonomous vehicles as it generally takes two years to design, test and manufacture a new car model. The new ADAS is estimated to comprise more than 200 electronic control units (ECU), more than 20 sensors, including millimeter wave radars and image sensing devices, in addition to central control and network devices, to be able to cope with complex interactions between the vehicle, pedestrians and traffic signals. To respond to the technological challenges, leading automakers around the globe are stepping up efforts toward the R&D of their own unique smart technologies to embrace the autonomous driving era.A myriad of electronic control and high-performance semiconductor chips are being used by automotive electronics, powering advances of autonomous driving innovations. This also results in a growing share of costs of automotive electronics components and related mechanical parts in an average vehicle. Many new components with innovative designs are burgeoning and are favored by the supply chain, marking a new growth milestone for the automotive supply chain. The automotive market has seen the incorporation of popular functions originally available on smartphones in in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems and electronic instrument panels after they pass automotive safety certification. They have become standard features included in original equipment (OE) on leading car brands. The digital cockpit platform is another innovative concept that integrates all of the T-shape panel, electronic dashboard, and IVI system in one and uses a single processor to handle the in-vehicle control network comprising massive data. These developments aim to turn the future car into a giant computer.Competition intensifies amid explosive growth in demand for ADAS from China automotive marketThe upcoming autonomous driving era will spur a significant growth in the demand for active safety systems. Eye-catching ADAS features coupled with strong marketing campaigns by American and European automakers for their high-end vehicles have made anti-collision, lane change assistance, blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control and vehicle control the much raved-about ADAS functions. Not letting its American and European counterparts get all the glory, the red-hot China automotive market, already having shipments surpassing those to American and European markets to rank No. 1, will see more than 50% of new cars entering the market equipped with ADAS over the next few years. As such, the market is closely watching the growth potential of ADAS-related components.The competition in the ADAS market represents a pre-battle of autonomous driving technologies. ADAS leveraging a range of radar and sensor technologies combined with use scenario analysis, panorama view around the vehicle, sensor fusion technologies can quickly process and analyze sensor data, thereby instantly making a response to enhance safety on the road. A highly integrated solution combining a robust ADAS processor, digital control board and IVI system needs metal mechanical parts for protection so that they can perform high-precision sensing on the complex surroundings of a vehicle. These in-vehicle box-type metal mechanical parts of various sizes are essential to reliable ADAS operation. They are the small parts that make a big difference.Offering both premium quality and abundant capacity, Getac embraces explosive opportunitiesThe Taiwan automotive supply chain has a number of "hidden champion" firms. Among them, Getac, known for being one of the world's top three rugged computer suppliers, engaged in collaboration with German-based Volkswagen Group in 2017 to use Getac's rugged computers to craft Volkswagen's vehicle diagnostics systems. The deal enabled Getac to establish a direct service relationship with Europe's largest automaker. As a matter of fact, Getac has also made significant advances toward the automotive OE market with another product line – die-cast aluminum alloy automotive parts manufactured by its key subsidiary. The die casting process is characterized by quickly injecting molten alloy under high pressure into a mold cavity. The molten alloy then solidifies under pressure and the final shape is formed. The technology has the advantages of easy-to-shape, high yield and high temperature resistance. Furthermore, aluminum alloy is lightweight, rigid and reliable. It can be easily melted and reused to increase the recycling rate of scrapped automotive parts, making it particularly suitable for manufacturing ADAS and self-driving system components.Mechanical parts, mainly glass fiber and automotive metal stamping parts, contribute 40%-50% of Getac's revenues. Automotive mechanical parts account for 10-15% of Getac's revenues with safety belt spool andspindle shipments especially catching market attention. According to Getac chairman James Hwang, Getac produces 12 million to 14 million safety belt spools and spindle per month, annual capacity topping 140 million units. Suppose one vehicle uses four safety belt spindles. It means that Getac supplies the product to 36 million vehicles every year. As the global automotive market sees approximately 80 million new cars a year, it can be assumed that Getac holds more than 40% of the safety belt spindle OE market, outperforming the competition.In the past year, Getac has been stepping up efforts toward ECU housing and bracket for ADAS systems, for example, windshield wiper and air bag controller housing, camera housing, ECU housing and bracket, PCB substrate, new-energy car electricity generator casing, heat sink, and rechargeable battery casing. Hwang is cautiously optimistic that Getac's automotive mechanical parts business will make major advances over the next two to four years. The company has set a target to double its automotive business revenue in three to five years.To ride the growth momentum arising from ADAS developments, Getac undertook a capacity expansion plan last year, simultaneously increasing production capacity of its plants in eastern China and Hanoi, Vietnam. With a large number of automated production machines in place, capacity will expand 20% in the first phase. Additional capacity may be added based on order volumes. The steady expansion pace will enable Getac's automotive business revenue to maintain robust growth. Hwang spoke in great enthusiasm about Getac's ability to independently develop automated production machinery and design manufacturing process. Take its Vietnam plant with a high level of automation for example. Getac's automation and process design capability enables record-breaking production capacity with minimum labor while guaranteeing premium product quality. This is why Getac is favored by leading car brands and tier-1 automotive parts suppliers and selected as their partner in technology.Getac's manufacturing and operation teams have crafted advanced automated production equipment and designed high-efficiency production processes, which enable Getac to meet customer's urgent demand for mass production. Getac also demands premium product quality and continues to make improvements and incorporate innovative processes to stay ahead of evolving and challenging customer needs. This way, Getac is able to deliver high-value services to world-class car brands and tier-1 suppliers.In response to explosive growth of new types of opportunities arising from ADAS and Level 3 autonomous vehicles, wide-ranging mechanical housing and parts are being used in never-before-seen applications. Custom designs are being made and production capacity is also flexibly planned to accommodate customer needs. At this time when ADAS and Level 3 autonomous vehicles are getting ready to enter design validation and mass production, components designed by suppliers are beginning to get tested and validated against the new standards and requirements. With today's cars transitioning from traditional power to autonomous driving, the automotive market is exactly the type of market that Getac is targeting. Its high value-added characteristics and enormous growth potential is particularly grabbing attention worldwide. Leveraging its extensive service experiences, Getac has built an operation team truly capable of resolving customers' problems, which will help Getac capture tremendous ADAS and autonomous driving opportunities.Getac chairman James Hwang

Power supply maker and industrial automation solution developer Delta Electronics showcased a 3D machine vision-based inspection solution matched with CPS (cyber-physical system) for use in glue dispensing and precise soldering in PCB production, an example of application of CPS to smart manufacturing solutions, at Taipei International Industrial Automation Exhibition 2018 during August 1-4.Conventionally, changes in product specification are followed by costly production line adjustments. CPS enables software programming-based simulation of operating parameters such as routes and space of robotic arms' motion, length of conveyors and rotating speeds of motors in virtual environment. Then, parameters after simulation are transferred to controllers as reference for designing and structuring production lines, reducing time and cost for machine adjustments.Such simulation in virtual environment is not necessary to reach 100% or very high precision, for robots matched with 3D machine vision can automatically make up for errors between simulation and actual positioning, said general manager Andy Liu for the company's Industrial Automation Business Group.Ideal smart manufacturing is that many front-end procedures in manufacturing can be undertaken based on CPS at laboratories instead of being executed at production lines, Liu indicated.Delta Electronics' booth at Taipei International Industrial Automation Exhibition 2018Photo: Chloe Liao, Digitimes, August 2018

Denmark-based Universal Robots (UR) is gearing up to promote sales of its latest flagship e-Series collaborative robots in the Taiwan market to help local small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) accelerate their automation transformation.Showcased at the just-concluded Taipei International Industrial Automation Exhibition, the e-Series collaborative robots feature additional force torque sensors that can automatically figure out actual load and gravity of each robot in accordance with the parameters of four fixed positions while also boosting the agility of the robot, according to PH Yang, president of UR Taiwan.Yang said that UR hopes to help Taiwan SMEs materialize their automation transformation with the firm's cost-efficient e-Series collaborative robots. He disclosed Taiwan's Babo Arms, a bubble tea shop, has adopted UR's collaborative robots to handle repetitive juice mixing work, allowing employees to engage in more value-added jobs.Also present at the exhibition, UR president Jurgen vo Hollen noted that the Industry 5.0 trend with collaborative robots as the core is continuing fermenting, and the designs of collaborative robots must meet such requirements as fast installation, flexible deployment, easy programming, and safety operations if the robots are to become reliable tools for manufacturers to quickly upgrade their production lines.

In a bid to help Taiwan makers explore smart city business opportunities at home and abroad, Taipei City Government has plans to set up the Global Organization of Smart (GO Smart) in 2019, with the body's secretariat to be established in Taipei in October, according to Taipei deputy mayor CR Lin.Lin made the remarks at a recent press conference hosted by the Taiwan Smart City Solutions Alliance (TSSA) after Chunghwa Telecom chairman Yu Cheng became TSSA's new chairman.Lin said that the new organization will serve as a platform for Taiwan smart city industry to develop export sales, with enterprises and top officials of major cities in Taiwan and China to be invited to join the new body.On the same occasion, Cheng also noted that Taiwan is a major exporter of many smart city equipment and components, with 70% of components for driverless vehicles supplied by Taiwan makers, for instance. He said Taiwan has the capabilities to develop smart cities through IoT applications.TSSA and Taipei will continue to jointly organize the annual Smart City Summit & Expo in 2019, to be staged at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall March 26-29.