The availability of quality medical resources is one of Taiwan's most powerful competitiveness, but how the resources can be better utilized to not only take care of the health of residents in the country but also rake in more foreign exchanges through serving patients abroad has attracted growing interests among medical professionals and hospitals.Quite a few doctors or healthcare professionals have chosen to set up healthcare startups rather than staying in the stable clinical medicine environment. But without the support of clinical resources, they can hardly get instant feedbacks for their products or services to facilitate improvements.Such new healthcafre startups have attracted ICT engineers. The combination of career-minded healthcare professionals and ICT engineers is gaining momentum as a new force in search of breakthroughs amid the restrictions of the national health insurance program and uncertainty in the electronic products market. It would be ideal for clinics or hospitals to keep their best technologies and services for residents in Taiwan while also serving international patients via cloud platforms.In this regard, clinics or hospitals can install the most critical clinical decision and analysis capabilities on their cloud service platforms, and the physiological data collected from overseas patients via remote IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) hardware devices can be sent back to the platforms for analysis and diagnosis. This way, online healthcare staff can extend virtually on-spot medical care to overseas patients without wasting precious medical resources.Joshua Healthcare's export operation modelSuch an operation model is being carried out by Taipei-based Joshua Healthcare founded by Alpha Lin, an expert in hernia repair surgery. Lin's clinic has set up a cloud medical service platform allowing international patients to make hernia surgery reservations, and its medical team can help patients arrange airport pick-up service and make flight ticket, hotel room and surgery reservations.The medical team can continue to handle post-surgery medical care for the patients, asking them to periodically upload their physiological data to the cloud platform to facilitate follow-up tracking of post-surgery conditions. Joshua Healthcare can refer Vietnamese patients to a Taiwan outpatient clinic at Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmacy, allowing doctors in both countries to engage in online consultations.This way, Joshua Healthcare can integrate Taiwanese doctors serving at diverse departments to meet foreign demand for high-end healthcare services through remote cloud platforms. The doctors can spend most of their usual time serving patients in Taiwan, and their outstanding clinical surgery techniques can also attract overseas patients to come to the country to undergo paid surgery services on a full-payment basis. The medical tourism's economic benefits for transportation, lodging, restaurant, and travel services will usher in a multi-win integrated medical service model.Medical tourismHigh-end healthcare market in Southeast Asia has been dominated by Singapore, and the top-two medical tourism destinations in the region are Thailand and Malaysia. Despite its world-class clinical medicine, Taiwan has lagged behind in medical tourism due to a lack of supporting measures and business models. In fact, remote healthcare services for patients in Southeast Asia or even Taiwanese investors there can become a new "blue-ocean" market for Taiwan's clinics and hospitals.Another business model is being embraced by Changhua Christian Hospital (CCH), which is based in central Taiwan, for its operation in Thailand. In line with the Taiwan government's New Southbound Policy, the hospital's superintendent Kuo Shou-jen, CEO Nina Kao and a branch president Lee Kuo-wei have paid visits to top-tier hospitals in Thailand with the aim of leveraging CCH's abundant medical resources to help local hospitals in the Southeast Asian country build smart healthcare systems and dedicated medical care services. CCH has been active in providing VIP medical checkup services for a large number of Taiwan investors and their managers in Thailand and offering healthcare consulting services for them through messaging app LINE. The hospital is also building strategic partnerships with hospitals there to localize and better healthcare services to Taiwanese investors and local people in the Southeast Asian country.(Ken Yu is CEO of iMedtac)

Samsung has a far smaller share than TSMC in the wafer foundry sector, but Samsung's technologies built from its experience in memory and Exynos series AP production are as good as any other leading players. At the moment, Samsung's non-memory businesses together contribute only 7% of the company's revenues, but profits from its memory business are 3.2 times those of TSMC. However, in terms of profits from non-memory businesses, TSMC are 6.2 times Samsung's.As the business opportunities from smart city, smart home and IoV begin to rise, demand for APs is also expected to pick up dramatically. With sales of car-use semiconductor products expected to enjoy a CAGR of 18% for the next few years, Samsung's acquisition of Harman and its partnership with Audi for supplying car-use APs are both expected to bring in strong revenues: a conventional car may require around 200-300 ICs for its systems, but an autonomous driving vehiclemay need as many as 2,000.TSMC and Samsung have both announced plans to build their 3nm manufacturing capabilities, but market researchers estimate that the fee for designing an IC on 3nm node would be at least US$500 million. For a 28nm planar-type IC, the average design fee is about US$51.3 million, but one using 7nm FinFET process costs nearly US$300 million, almost six times as much because of all the expenses from related intellectual property (IP) and others. Most IC design houses would prefer to stick with foundries such as TSMC and Samsung that have technological advantages, but the high costs involved in making chips at the top-notch foundry houses will remain a problem for IC design houses.(Note: This is part of a series of articles by Digitimes president Colley Hwang on the latest developments of the IT industry in the wake of the US-China trade war.)

The worldwide semiconductor equipment market, which had a scale of US$60.5 billion in 2018, is controlled mostly by companies in the West. The development of China's semiconductor industry has been constantly threatened by possible US government bans on makers providing most advanced equipment to China's firms.In addition to local players that have been aggressively investing in China's semiconductor industry, multinational enterprises have also been doing the same. Of the worldwide semiconductor equipment market's scale of US$60.5 billion in 2018, China contributed US$12.2 billion or 20.2%. However, according to information from the upstream supply chain Digitimes has obtained, only less than 40% of the amount was from China-based firms. The rest was from demand from multinational enterprises such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel and TSMC, for their capacity expansions in China.Many market watchers originally expected the proportion of China-based semiconductor players' equipment purchases to rise on year in 2019, but have recently revised their views, estimating the percentage to slip in 2019. Meanwhile, semiconductor players in Taiwan who had been conservative about investing locally in the past few years, are expected to become more aggressive in planning their local capacity expansions in response to the US-China trade tensions.While SEMI has forecast that the worldwide semiconductor equipment market will decline in 2019, demand for semiconductor equipment from Taiwan is expected to rise back to US$11.4 billion in 2019, coming close to that from South Korea and China. In 2018, China had the second largest semiconductor equipment market, behind only South Korea. But China's demand for semiconductor equipment is estimated to slip from 2018's US$12.2 billion to US$11.96 billion in 2019 because of the US trade policies against China.(Note: This is part of a series of articles by Digitimes president Colley Hwang on the latest developments of the IT industry in the wake of the US-China trade war.)

EMS provider Qisda has disclosed it has seen 74% in improvement in production efficiency from adopting collaborative robots for production lines at its factory in northern Taiwan, with about 30 workers originally assigned for a production line reduced to 12-15 ones.Qisda said its production lines need to be adjusted quite often to cater to different specifications and sizes for diverse product models. To facilitate flexible adjustments, Qisda sid it began to deploy collaborative robots in 2016, with such robots collaborating with workers to reach flexibility in adjusting production lines.A large portion of collaborative robots are used in assembling, testing and packaging processes involving complicated work, Qisda noted. Collaborative robots equipped with machine vision and AI-based inspection are used in the testing process, and robotic arms are used in the packaging process in combination with AGVs (automated guided vehicles), Qisda indicated.The use of collaborative robots is in connection with MES (manufacturing execution system) and WMS (warehouse management system), Qisda added.With collaborative robots, the time taken to adjust a production line for different product models has been shortened from 30 minutes to less than three minutes, Qisda said.Making collaborative robots easy to operate by simplifying programming and optimizing user interfaces is key to boosting use of such robots, according to Taiwan-based collaborative robot maker Techman Robot. Techman has offered TM Plug & Play kits which enable users of its collective robots to quickly finish hardware/software setting to reduce part of cost for system integration.Qisda's production lines with collaborative robots and workersPhoto: Company

The top-5 notebook brands saw their combined shipments slip 14% on month in April, a performance stronger than that of the same month a year ago, as Chromebook demand from North America's education sector had picked up and replacement demand in the enterprise sectors in Europe and Asia remained robust.Lenovo was the largest brand in April, leapfrogging the previous number-one Hewlett-Packard (HP) thanks to its significant Chromebook shipments for procurement orders. The proportion of its orders to Taiwan-based makers also increased, according to Digitimes Research's findings.HP witnessed a nearly 40% on-month decline in April as the company had underperformed its competitors in the enterprise sector and was the worst performing vendor among the top-5.Dell, which also enjoyed high Chromebook shipments in April, only experienced a 1% on-month drop in shipments.The top-3 ODMs' combined shipments dipped 11% on month in April. Of the three makers, Wistron had the smallest on-month decline of 4% in the month, while the leading maker Compal Electronics saw its shipment gap with Quanta Computer significantly widen in April due to more orders from Lenovo.

The global IC packaging and testing market had a scale of US$28 billion in 2018 with the top-10 players commanding a combined 84% share. Three of the top-10 players are based in China. Of the four sectors in China's semiconductor industry, packaging and testing is the one with technologies closest to the worldwide level. This is because Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology began its acquisition strategy early. Jiangsu Changjiang currently generates revenues of around US$3.64 billion a year, holding a global market share of 13%.Joining Jiangsu Changjiang in the global top-10 are Tongfu Microelectronics and Tianshui Huatian Technology. The three of them commanded over 20% of the worldwide packaging and testing orders.At the moment, Taiwan players are still the most competitive in the packaging and testing field. Taiwan-based Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), SPIL, Powertech Technology (PTI), King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) and Chipbond are all top-10 players. The five firms together are able to satisfy 44% of worldwide packaging and testing demand, and together with other Taiwan-based non-top-10 players such as Orient Semiconductor Electronics and Sigurd Microelectronics, they have controlled over half of the global packaging and testing market for the past 10 years.Taiwan players' control of the back-end process of the semiconductor industry, plus Taiwan's strength in IC distribution, forms a firm support for the competitiveness of Taiwan's IC ecosystem.(Note: This is part of a series of articles by Digitimes president Colley Hwang on the latest developments of the IT industry in the wake of the US-China trade war.)

Collaborative robots (cobots) are emerging as key automation tool in the Industry 4.0 era and enjoy greater growth potentials than traditional industrial robots, as they are flexible, lightweight and easy to program and move, and can better cater to the automation needs of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), especially those engaged in electronics assembly.Unlike traditional industrial robots, which perform their work in physically isolated places, cobots come into direct contact with their human colleagues for man-machine collaborative operation. Cobots already replaced traditional industrial robots to take center stage at the 2019 Hannover Messe held in early April in Germany.According to the 2018 World Robotics Report released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), cobots will see the fastest growth in the future global robot market, with the largest growth momentum to come from the electronics manufacturing sector.This is because flexible production is increasingly needed by manufacturers, and the high mobility and agility of cobots can facilitate their flexible production deployments.To meet the robust market demand, Denmark-based Universal Robots (UR) has rolled out three different cobot sizes with payloads of 3kg, 5kg and 10 kg, which can be easily integrated into existing production environment. The company has sold over 34,000 cobots around the world that are used in thousands of production environments.UR's Greater China Region head BK Su noted that his company hopes to develop customized DIY collaborative robotic arms based on client-conceived ideas about key aspects ranging from assembly to execution command, so as to further boost the market acceptability for robotic arms.Taiwan's Techman Robot, a subsidiary of Quanta Computer, now offers a variety of cobots available in mobile, regular, medium and high payload series, applicable to electronics, food, automobile, semiconductor and panel manufacturing sectors. The firm's cobots can be integrated with pallets into a mobile robotic workstation.

Within China's semiconductor industry, the IC design sector actually achieved the most progress in 2018. But how big exactly is China's IC design industry? There have been many versions of the story.According to IC Insights' figures, the global IC design industry had a scale of US$109.5 billion in 2018. Of the annual orders of US$57.73 billion for foundries, 18.5% came from China-based clients. Judging from the proportion, we can assume that China's IC design industry had a scale of US$20.2 billion in 2018, a level similar to that of Taiwan, but higher than those of Japan and South Korea.Orders for foundry services from China also went up sharply by 41% on year from 2017's US$7.57 billion to US$10.69 billion in 2018.TSMC also saw its orders from China-based clients rise dramatically from 2017's US$3.7 billion to 2018's US$6 billion, up 61% on year. Although TSMC did not process all these orders at its fabs in China, China's IC design houses saw their combined contribution to the worldwide foundry market rise from 2017's 13.8% to 2018's 18.5%, an impressive growth providing key incentives for many to invest in China's foundry sector.(Note: This is part of a series of articles by Digitimes president Colley Hwang on the latest developments of the IT industry in the wake of the US-China trade war.)

China at the moment has as many as 30 semiconductor fabs under construction - the most ambitious investment plan the global semiconductor industry has ever seen. China's memory industry was originally meant to be a key growth driver, but it has lost momentum after the US ban on exports to China-based DRAM maker JHICC. On the other hand, China's wafer foundry sector continues seeing expansions with at least 13 local fabs eyeing business opportunities in the sector.Of the existing foundry houses in China, SMIC's capacity is the largest, followed by Shanghai Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing and then Taiwan-based TSMC. However, SMIC's business focus is on the 28nm node, which is a very competitive market segment that offers low profits. However, SMIC has recently obtained a US$10 billion fund for it to invest in 14nm process development. SMIC is now aiming to have its 14nm process begin mass production by the end of 2019 in a bid to break free from the fierce competition in the 28nm segment.TSMC's 200mm fab in Shanghai was not a major production facility for the maker. But the establishment of a new 16nm fab in Nanjing in 2018 helped advance China's semiconductor process. And TSMC's revenues from its China production are expected to grow from 2018's US$950 million to US$1.8 billion in 2023.TSMC originally planned to expand its Nanjing factory with new 7nm capacity, but may switch the expansion plan to a 12nm node due to the US-China trade tensions.(Note: This is part of a series of articles by Digitimes president Colley Hwang on the latest developments of the IT industry in the wake of the US-China trade war.)

If data collected from production process can be well concatenated, then problems affecting production efficiency can be quickly spotted through big data analysis, according to Alex Hsu, CEO of TAO Info, a Taiwan startup dedicated to offering data analytics to help manufacturers diagnose their production lines and optimize production process.In achieving smart production, Hsu said, data collection and analysis is crucial preparatory work, but Taiwan manufacturers still have much room for improvement in this aspect as many of them are just starting to use data analysis for single purpose such as defect image analysis or predictive equipment maintenance.Hsu stressed that the final purpose of smart production is not to enhance the performance of any single system but to optimize the entire production process and boost yield rates through AI-based analysis of concatenated data.Hsu, who used to engage in the semiconductor sector, said it is a thorny problem for IC engineers to locate production-affecting factors from among thousands of frontend processes, just like looking for a needle in a haystack. But in analyzing big data, he continued, algorithms can be used to define problems through a huge amount of parameters concerning machinery, material, formula, operator and environment and quickly sort out key factors affecting production in accordance with correlation among the parameters. Such a practice is aimed at narrowing the range of possible factors.Hsu continued that most AI or neural network analysis technologies can now be applied to deal with correlation rather than the cause-and-effect relation between process parameters and production problems, and therefore his company can use a search engine to sort out the most likely relevant parameters by conducting a correlation-based sequencing of all the parameters, allowing engineers to quickly address problems.Manufacturers can also incorporate AI to achieve smart product traceability in addition to smart production, Hsu noted, furthering that many consumer electronics vendors including Lenovo, Huawei and Dell have asked their supporting partners to actualize "digital twin" applications, so as to concatenate all the production processes of the entire supply chains.TAO Info CEO Alex HsuPhoto: Chloe Liao, Digitimes, May 2019