Taiwan-based cloud computing startup Intelligent Cloud Plus, an acoustic specialist, offers solutions that can analyze the sound waves generated by machines' vibration to provide warning in advance for preventive maintenance, according to company general manager Lawton Liao.Its team already had around 40 years of experience in industrial automation control before founding Intelligent Cloud Plus three years ago. It is offering its solutions to help traditional factories transform from manual to smart management, Liao said.For manufacturers that may need smart manufacturing applications, Liao suggests they conduct overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) tests to evaluate their current equipment.In OEE evaluation, production capacity utilization rate is one of the most important factors, and malfunctioning equipment significantly affects utilization rates.Intelligent Cloud Plus' solutions monitor machines' vibration to analyze their conditions, preventing major reductions in utilization rates.Intelligent Cloud Plus has cooperated with a China-based first-tier sound hardware manufacturer to jointly develop its solutions.Intelligent Cloud Plus also has an image analysis AI solution that is able to pair with existing automated optical inspection machines in the market to identify any physical defects on products, reducing manual labor for inspection work.Intelligent Cloud Plus GM Lawton LiaoPhoto: Chloe Liao, Digitimes, March 2019

Combined revenues of Taiwan's top-3 foundries - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) - are expected to fall 23.4% sequentially and 17% on year to US$8.27 billion in the first quarter of 2019, according to Digitimes Research.A seasonal slowdown in smartphone chip orders, disappointing sales of the new iPhones, and unfavorable market conditions discouraging fabless chipmakers from building up stockpiles will drag down these foundries' revenues during the quarter, Digitimes Research believes.Digitimes Research also identified the impact of defective chemical materials on TSMC's production earlier in the first quarter as another cause of the drops in the combined revenues generated by Taiwan's top-3 foundries during the quarter.TSMC will see sales generated from 16/12nm process technology decrease substantially as a proportion of the foundry's total revenues in the first quarter of 2019, as the use of defective chemicals affected mostly its 16/12nm manufacturing lines.As a result, Taiwan's top-3 foundries will see their combined revenues generated from 28nm and below process technologies slide as a proportion of the overall combined revenues to 54.9% in the first quarter from 59.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018. The foundries' overall wafer ASPs will also fall to a nearly 7-quarter low in the first quarter.TSMC previously revised downward its revenue and margin outlook for the first quarter, due to a higher number of scrapped wafers than its earlier estimate. Nevertheless, the foundry said the wafers scrapped in the first quarter will be made up in the following quarter.

Taiwan's Chung Yuan Christian University has established a demonstration production line that comes with R&D and product demonstration centers, looking to assist its entrepreneurship teams to develop new technologies and applications.The university's Executive Operation Office for Industry-Academia Cooperation has been assisting its smart manufacturing and Internet of Things (IoT) entrepreneurship teams to develop Industry 4.0 applications via training education and industry-academia cooperation.Servtech, a company established by one of the teams, is now a solution provider for Industry 4.0 applications. The company's technology is able to monitor and collect factory information and analyze the data to help improve the production efficiency and make supply chain management more flexible.A demonstration production line at Chung Yuan Christian UniversityPhoto: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, February 2019

Taiwan-based makers saw their combined shipments of monitors increase on year for the fourth consecutive quarter in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to Digitimes Research.Taiwan's share of worldwide monitor shipments also rose in the fourth quarter of 2018.Although Taiwan's shipments are expected to maintain an on-year growth in the first quarter of 2019, the volumes will be down 6-7% from the previous quarter due to seasonality, Digitimes Research's number showed.In terms of sizes, Taiwan's shipment share of 27-inch and above monitors continues rising as consumers' demand keeps leaning toward large-size models.Taiwan's monitor production value had a larger sequential decline than shipments in the fourth quarter of 2018 as Taiwan monitors' ASP has been dropping as a result of decreasing panel quotes. The ASP is expected to continue slipping in the first quarter of 2019.Taiwan's largest monitor maker TPV experienced a sharp sequential shipment drop in the fourth quarter of 2018, while Qisda achieved the highest on-year shipment growth among Taiwan's top makers at 13.8% in the fourth quarter of 2018.Since the first quarter is expected to be the slowest season of 2019, all Taiwan makers are expected to witness sequential shipment drops during the period with Qisda and Wistron expected to enjoy on-year shipment increases.

The quantity and quality of big data will play a crucial role in the development of smart healthcare industry, according to Stefan Stantejsky, deputy director of Austrian Commercial Office in Taipei.Stantejsky said that AI development will require sufficient big data to support deep machine learning, and developing new-generation smart healthcare technologies will involve the privacy of personal data.In this regard, the Austrian office's director Christian Fuchssteiner opined that AI development in Taiwan and Austria may be slower than other countries that are less concerned about privacy of personal data.Stantejsky said that his country is located in central Europe and its capital Vienna is a major biomedical base in Europe, serving as an important gateway for global tech firms seeking to foray into the EU market. Likewise, Taiwan, with its excellent geographic situation in the heart of the Asia Pacific region, can easily develop innovation startup forces by leveraging its IT prowess.Stantejsky said there are many successful Austria startups operating in the fields of biomedicine, information technology and mechanical dynamic transportation.Biomedicine startup Misugar, for instance, has performed well in the research of diabetes medicines, and though acquired by a US business later it still maintains an operating base in Austria.In terms of information technology, Austria has many startups engaged in diverse social network, living application, leisure sports and healthcare solutions, including Biwin in online gaming platforms, Hitbox in video streaming services, flea market app developer Shpock and diabetes medicine developer AFFiRis, according to Stantejsky.Stefan Stantejsky, deputy director of Austrian Commercial Office in TaipeiPhoto: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, February 2019

Taiwan must move to add more values to its tourism industry by developing smart innovations and smart transportation solutions, according to Christian Fuchssteiner, director of the Austrian Commercial Office in Taipei.Austria is set to demonstrate its latest smart tourism, transportation and autonomous driving solutions at the 2019 Smart City Summit & Expo at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center from March 26-29.Fuchssteiner said that both Taiwan and Austria lack natural resources and therefore had better develop industries with high add-on values and sustainable operations, such as tourism and environmental protection industries.He continued that Taiwan, situated in the heart of the Asia Pacific region, can well attract tourists from Southeast Asia with shorter flight time and beautiful sceneries of its local cities. In this regard, diverse smart city solutions can be developed to make city tours more attractive to tourists.Many businessmen and traders visit Taiwan or exhibit at its annual trade fairs, and many others come to attend academic seminars or to engage in short-term work. If more innovative tourism packages can be offered to allow family members of the incoming visitors to enjoy in-depth tours of local cities and experience local cultural activities, then a "blue-ocean" market for urban development may emerge for Taiwan, according to Fuchssteiner.He also revealed that Austria has seen 10% of its annual GDP contributed by its tourism industry, with China, Russia, Switzerland and Taiwan being the top-four sources of tourist spending in the country.Christian Fuchssteiner, director of Austrian Commercial Office in TaipeiPhoto: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, Febauary 2019

Quantum dots (QDs) are a commercial success for nanotechnology. They are already used in display applications. Importantly, the QD technology and application landscape is rapidly evolving.Display and lightingQDs in displays is not a new story. They are being used to widen the color gamut of LCDs, enabling such devices to compete with high-quality OLEDs in terms of performance, whilst largely retaining the cost structure character of LCDs. The use of QDs has created an interesting market dynamic especially in the large-sized - such as TV - end of the market.In this application, the main current method of QD implementation is QD enhancement film (QDEF). Here, the QDs embedded in a resin are coated and sandwiched by two barrier layers. This film is then inserted into the LCD stack.Within this existing opportunity one sees many trends. First, the QD material composition has evolved from being Cd-based to Cd-free. This transition was driven by legislative requirements and is now nearly complete. It was enabled by improvements in the QY (quantum yield), FWHM (full width half maximum), stability and cost of InP based QDs. Today, this transition involves a minimal QY penalty thanks to notable YoY improvements in InP QDs' QY. However, this still imposes a FWHM penalty even though the InP based QDs are narrowing their FWHMs. Today, 35nm is demonstrated in commercial labs and 37-38nm is expected in production.In parallel, the QDs are becoming more stable. This has relaxed the barrier requirements. Indeed, such requirements have already dropped from around 1E-3 to 1E-4 g/day/sqm to 1E-1 or 1E-2. This has significantly reduced barrier cost and complexity, thus helping drive down overall implementation cost. The higher QYs also give higher brightness thus decreasing the QD content required per each sqm for a given lumen output level. The suppliers are also experimenting with direct on-glass deposition to bring the value chain in house and to cut out the extra substrate from the solution. Finally, the lower overall costs are allowing QD LCDs to leave the premium priced bracket.The QDEF is not the end game. It will grow in the short term but will likely go obsolete in the long term. The first stepping stone will be QD color filters (QDCF) both for LCD and OLED displays. In LCDs, the QDCFs replace traditional color filters. This gives wide color gamut benefits whilst also improving efficiency. Material and system level technical hurdles remain though. At the material level, issues such as patterning, blue absorbance, air-stability, etc much be overcome. Today, many are working on ink formulate to enable inkjettable QDCFs for large area displays. Others are working to properly disperse a high QD wt% into photoresists to enable high resolution QDCFs. At the system level for LCDs, the polarizer will likely need to come in-cell whilst additional reflectors might be needed since QDCFs re-emit light in all directions including back into the device. The QD excitation by background light must also be supressed.QDCF on OLEDs are also interesting especially after the recent news about Samsung. The basic idea is to enable the production of high-quality large-area displays. Here, blue OLED would be continuously deposited to provide the backlight. The QDCFs would be inkjet printed to provide red and green emission. This hybrid approach would overcome the scalability limitations of RGB OLEDs (made via FMM) and potentially the cost issues of many-layered WOLEDs.However, efficiency would remain limited since blue OLED is still a fluorescent material with low EQE (external quantum efficiency). Lifetime and brightness will also be limited by the blue material. Indeed, to partially address the latter two issues, two blue stacks will likely be used to split the driving voltage. This technique is already used in WOLED. It is possible however that the next-generation of blue materials will become commercial in the time it will take hybrid QD-OLED to mature. Interestingly, the process and material learnings from QDCF-OLED will not be lost since they will act as a stepping towards the long-term endgame of fully printed emissive QD displays (QLED).On-chip QDs are also on the roadmap in displays. They would enable wide colour gamut LCDs without needing additional QDEF or QDCF. The challenge remains in ensuring QDs survive the harsh heat and light flux stresses which they experience when sitting in close proximity to the LED source. Numerous strategies are being followed now with positive results. These include protective layers, right ligand choices, optimization of core-shell structure, etc.The on-chip QDs are particularly interesting for lighting applications. This is because they enable improving the efficiency especially when using a narrow FWHM red downconverter. QDs thus allow obtaining high efficiency as well as high CRI (color rendering index). The challenge here too has been stability. Today there are commercial product announcements and there have recently been acquisitions of QD suppliers by major lighting manufacturers. We believe these products incorporate Cd-based red QDs. As such, they suffer from all the toxicity issues associated with cadmium. The InP based are still not sufficiently stable even for mid-power LEDs, for example, 20W/cm2.In general, as the stability of QDs improve, more types and application sectors of LED lighting will open up to QD penetration. In the lighting sector QDs are also being explored for their ability to offer a customized spectrum. This could, for example, be used in horticultural lighting to allow matching the spectrum of the light sources with that of the plant's photosynthesis.The endgame for QDs in displays however is QLED. This would essentially be the ultimate display: emissive (thus 100% contrast), extremely wide color gamut, thin (thus flexible), efficient, etc. The route to QLED is still long though. The Cd-free QLEDs still exhibit very low EQEs even in the lab. Their levels are below Cd QDs and far below PhOLED (phosphorescent OLED). More critically, the lifetime even at low brightness levels is on the scales of hours to tens of hours. The exact device architecture and optimized materials in the QLED stack are also not yet established. The processing is at a very early stage with only basic small samples having been demonstrated at tradeshows. The interest remains strong, however. Therefore, it is an area to closely watch.Of course, QDs in displays do not exist in a competitive vacuum. There are many competitive technologies. The nanocell color filter utilized by a Korea display maker does offer wide color gamut. We think this technology is based on a special material in the filter that eliminates the spectral overlap between different coloured traditional color filters. The next-gen of OLED materials should also not be discounted. The results, especially with hyper TADF (thermally active delayed fluorescence,) are promising because they offer narrow FWHM together with high EQE. They are still in development phase and large-scale production is not yet straightforward. Phosphors are also constantly improving. In particular, the KSF red phosphor already offers narrower FWHM than QDs. Rumours also circulate about a green narrow FWHM being close to market launch.PhotosensorsQDs have wide absorption characteristics. Importantly, the absorption characteristics can be tuned by changing dot size and/or composition. Furthermore, QDs can be cast from the solution, giving rise to easy integration possibilities with Si CMOS read-out ICs (ROIC).A strong point for QDs lies in high resolution IR, especially short-wave IR (SWIR) photosensors. Here, the right QD material, for example, PbS, can be used. The QDs can be deposited on the CMOS ROIC. This deposition can be with dip casting, spin coating, or other methods. The sensing element can also be configured as a photoconductor or photodiode.The early results are that QDs can exceed the detectivity (in Jones) of InGaAs systems. Their direct on-CMOS integration also might overtime the resolution limitations imposed by heterogenous integration (bonding) of GaAs-on- Si CMOS.There is however still much work to do. The ligand exchange mechanisms need to be developed to enable closely-packaged and highly-conducting QD thin films. The film deposition techniques need to improve too to ensure uniform, highly-controlled and repeatable deposition. The patterning techniques as well as the best choice for other materials in the systems remain open questions. These include SWIR-transparent top electrode and HTL/ETL in a photodiode arrangement. The issue of stability also needs to be addressed. The main QDs materials under consideration are lead-based, thus raising health and safety concerns. The lead-free alternatives do not yet work as well.QDs can also be used in visible photodetectors. The advantage here is to enable high-resolution global shutter sensors. In general, the resolution of existing global shutter sensors is low. This is because each pixel requires a large capacitor to hold the charge until column ADCs (analogue-to-digital converters) reach out the data. This storage capacitor would not be needed if each pixel had its own ADCs. Such an arrangement, that is, an ADC per pixel, clearly would consume too much real estate and power (note there are some interesting product announcements that bond a back CMOS to accommodate a high number of ADCs but such configurations are not easy to implement). To accommodate both the capacitor as well as photosensing element per pixel, each pixel will need to be large, thus compromising resolution.QDs can overcome this issue by separating the photosensor and read-out circuits. The photosensing element would be a QD layer cast atop the ROIC. The QD layer would be independently voltage controlled, allowing it to be opened or closed like a global shutter. This approach opens up more real estate for a larger storage capacitor with the silicon. Note that a large capacitor well translates to a large dynamic range because it can accommodate higher light intensity before saturating. Thus far, interesting prototypes enabling QD-CMOS global shutters have been demonstrated.As before QDs do not exist in a competitive vacuum. Organic semiconductors (OSCs) can also be cast from solution atop the ROIC. They too could offer high-res global shutter image sensors. Given that OSCs represent a growing diverse family of materials, their exact absorption characteristics could also be varied. In general, however OCS would struggle to address SWIR or longer wavelengths.(Khasha Ghaffarzadeh is research director at IDTechEx.)

Smartphone application processor (AP) shipments to China vendors in fourth-quarter 2018 declined 10% on quarter with system manufacturers adjusting shipment targets downward. As system manufacturers adjusted shipment targets downward by an average of more than 10%, some even by 20%, Digitimes Research expects they will become even more conservative in shipment ramp-up and will adjust inventory levels in first-quarter 2019, resulting in a drop of 25.7% in shipments on quarter.Although the China and global smartphone markets both experienced declines in shipments in 2018, China-based vendors gained ground in overseas markets, with smartphone AP shipments to them growing. A total of 800 million smartphone processors were shipped to China vendors in 2018, up 7.5% on year.With weak demand in their domestic market, China-based vendors including Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and BBK all exerted efforts toward overseas markets in 2018. Despite the impact from rising US-China trade tension, their efforts generated results in India and Eastern Europe. This was the major growth driver hoisting smartphone AP shipments to China, with Huawei making the most contribution, which directly benefited Hisilicon.Market focus will return to the China and India markets in 2019. The smartphone market will see fiercer price and spec competitions in the under CNY1,500 (US$222.84) price range and cost-effectiveness of smartphone AP will play a crucial role influencing the competition.According to Digitimes Research's observation, the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators among smartphones (excluding the Apple iPhones) in China dipped temporarily in fourth-quarter 2018 as AI accelerators would add to AP manufacturing costs and selling prices but their applications on end devices had yet to bring significant benefits to consumers, affecting vendors' willingness to adopt AI accelerators. However, the penetration will likely rebound in first-quarter 2019. As to process technologies, there was an obvious transition with the ratio of the 28nm node continuing declining and the 7nm node growing significantly.With governments and system manufacturers around the world actively engaging in 5G development, the market can expect to see phones with Qualcomm's 5G modem chips in first-quarter 2019, according to Digitimes Research's latest quarterly report about China's smartphone AP shipments.

Taiwan startup Osense Technology has launched a smart baseball stadium app integrating all related O2O (online to offline) services, which can be simultaneously utilized by a large audience with the assistance of fast 5G transmission.The app can offer a variety of services needed by fans visiting baseball stadiums, including transportation routes, parking information, lavatory locations, seat locations, souvenir and dining services, stadium facilities, game schedules, and updates on baseball teams, among others.The app can also offer customized information about any specific stadium or baseball team.Moreover, the app also incorporates the AR interaction element to allow users to access instant 3D data concerning performance of any specific baseball player, or to instantly replay video clips.LW Feng, the firm's strategy manager, said that traffic of thousands of users needs the support of 5G high-speed transmission technology to transmit AR and high-definition images.Feng said the app will soon be available for use by baseball fans.

Taiwan-based Asia Pacific Telecom (APTG) has diclosed its 5G accelerator program is incubating 15 startups developing innovative services covering application of smart city solutions and AI, IoT technologies, gaming and entertainment, AR/VR, traffic monitoring and retail operation.APTG is the first mobile telecom carrier to obtain a permission from National Communications Commission (NCC) to set up a 5G experimental network in Taipei City in June 2018. For the network, APTG obtained an operating license from NCC for outdoor NR (new radio) base stations in late November 2018.APTG has set up the 5G accelerator program with support from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and has selected 15 startups from about 300 applicants in Taiwan and abroad - seven being local teams and eight from overseas including Singapore and Indonesia.