The IoT (Internet of Things) applications will see explosive development in 2019-2020 with total NB (narrow band)-IoT solutions to be fully incorporated into the smart city field, but no enterprises can fight single-handedly in the era, according to KC Liu, chairman of Advantech.Liu said that demand for IoT applications from customers, especially in China, has grown significantly since the beginning of 2018. This, coupled with full deployments by China's three telecom operators and web giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu as well as strong government policy support, has added drastic growth momentum to IoT applications in the country.Liu said Advantech is focusing on the development of SRP (solution ready packages) for IoT applications and on SI (system integration) seeking to expand the market through collaborating with cross-industry players.He disclosed that Advantech may cooperate first with China's Baidu in promoting IoT solutions, and may also collaborate with Alibaba in the future.As a provider of cross-industry platforms, Advantech has been actively carrying out labor divisions with telecom operators, large software firms and small and medium-sized enterprises to help traditional industries' transformations and upgrades.Faced with demand for professional and multiple applications from the sectors of smart city, smart healthcare, smart retail, smart transportation, smart logistics and smart energy, Advantech has developed WISE-PaaS platforms to serve customer needs, according to Liu.Liu said only a few firms operating well in the Internet+ era can successfully transition to the IoT era through business transformation.Advantech chairman KC LiuPhoto: Shihmin Fu, Digitimes, September 2018
Worldwide top-5 notebook brands saw their combined shipments increase 11% on month in August as they began releasing new products and preparing inventory for the second half of the year. However, because of the shortages for Intel's entry-level and some mainstream processors, their combined shipments went down 4% on year in August, the first on-year decline in the past five months, while the on-month growth was also weaker than that of August 2017.Hewlett-Packard's (HP) shipments increased over 20% on month in August, but slipped 6% on year. This was the second consecutive month of on-year drop for the company, according to Digitimes Research's figures.Lenovo only had an on-month shipment growth of less than 10% in August due to the ongoing trade tensions between China and the US plus weakening demand from China's notebook market. Dell's shipments dipped from a month ago in August as its Chromebook orders were almost completed.The top-3 ODMs witnessed an on-month increase of around 10% in combined shipments in August. Quanta Computer surpassed Compal Electronics and returned as the largest maker worldwide thanks to dramatic growths in its orders from US- and Taiwan-based clients, boosting its shipments by nearly 20% in the month.
While Industry 4.0 is changing people's current and future way of working, Intel is moving to fully deploy its technologies in every IoT node to make entire IoT system boast the best computing performance and facilitate wide applications of leading new technologies such as AI, smart Internet, and built-in information security mechanisms into IIoT (industrial IoT) applications, according to Xie Qingshan, Intel's China IoT marketing manager. Xie told Digitimes in a recent interview that Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution mainly refers to digital transformation of manufacturing, commercial and social fields, integrating physical, digital and biological worlds. In the process, bolstered by the popularity of high performance computing chips, IIoT can monitor the whole production process, from any equipment on production lines to every production material in warehouses.Xie continued that automated robots, AI, cloud computing, sensors and data analysis can be adopted to help smart manufacturing plants connect all the production and logistics processes in an organic way to achieve smart, efficient and sustainable manufacturing operations.Nevertheless, how to apply the new technologies to existing systems requires total solutions based on top-layer designs, instead of only installing some new machines or upgrading production lines, Xie said, stressing that new-generation manufacturers must, in particular, think about how to build higher-efficiency IIoT communication infrastructures to facilitate real-time collection, transmission, analysis and application of diverse data.Manufacturers are now aware that data will play a dominant role in the decision-making process, and all smart-plant employees have to think logically like a data scientist. Also, company managers should consider how to turn data into a core management element, instead of just handing collected data over to data scientists and making decisions based on their research conclusions, Xie indicated.Intel IIoT product division will focus on developing high-performance edge computing hardware products, highly-integrated industrial software integration platforms, and machine vision and AI applications development platforms, suitable industrial uses, Xie concluded.
Bluetooth low-energy indoor positioning solution developer Starwing Technology has reached a high technological accuracy level of 10-30cm in positioning error, much lower than a general level of 3-5m, according to the company.Starwing develops indoor positioning technology based on analysis and prediction using artificial neural network and AI (artificial intelligence) deep learning. The technology is used in indoor positioning, monitoring, safety early warning, tracking and hot spot analysis at railway/bus stations, airports, department stores, museums, factories, warehousing/logistics facilities, and medical care scenarios, Starwing indicated.At highly automated factories, accurate positioning is essential to feeding components/materials, assembling components and carrying finished products, Starwing said.For medical care, positioning tags with biometric monitoring functions can help track patients and understand their physiological conditions, Starwing noted.Indoor positioning technology can be used in jails to monitor inmates, Starwing indicated.Starwing said it has been in talks with many hospitals in Taiwan about cooperation, and will cooperate with partners in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for setting up an IoT booth at World Expo 2020 to take place in Dubai during October 20, 2020-April 10, 2021.Starwing's indoor positioning device (left) Photo: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, September 2018
Along with the constant development of blockchain technologies and applications, the era of chain groups and token economy has arrived, with 2018 being the starting year for a common community integrating public chains, industry shared chains and token economy, Yuan Dao, chairman of China's Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, has said at Global Blockchain Smart Application Forum held recently in Taipei.Yuan said the token concept allows the separation of token from coin, and it is hoped that through fewer than 100 lines of codes, a DApp (decentralized application) development and token certificate issuance can be completed. This way, the token certificate issuing efficiency can be boosted to materialize the "one-click certification" concept.Meanwhile, Yuan continued, multi-end, multi-dimension and multi-type practices can be adopted to let everybody join the blockchain space. And the final stage rests with issuing token certificates to all the people, so as to facilitate the incorporation of blockchain technologies into all sectors of society and create safe information circulation.Yuan elaborated further that digital tokens are a kind of human shared symbol based on the cryptography infrastructure, and can be issued and circulated around the world. In this regard, collaboration between industrial upstream and downstream players must be enhanced to push for the circulation of digital tokens. Enterprises can also build their global brands to cement patronage from network users through their own globally-circulated brand tokens.Inheriting Internet groundworkYuan commented that blockchain will inherit Internet groundwork to combine all the forces of the global Internet world and then apply the forces into diverse public infrastructures.The current blockchain development entails two major cores: digital ID and online payment. And comprehensive blockchain applications must start with a vertical promotion of token certificates before they are incorporated into diverse physical industries to facilitate common development by multiple sectors. In the future, trust-driven chain groups will join forces with belief-driven social groups to further spur blockchain development, according to Yuan.Yuan stressed that token economy will see brand-new, cross-chain and cross-domain scenarios, and open-source coding is needed to make blockchain become public infrastructure. He continued that consensus, trust and application will be core concepts of blockchain to create more of its value.Yuan indicated that the combination of digital tokens and physical economy will create an actual "blue ocean" of blockchain applications, adding that personal big data will become one of the core developments in the future as personal privacy and information will all become data property in the blockchain world.Yuan Dao, chairman of Zhonghuancun Blockchain Industry AlliancePhoto: Mark Tsai, Digitimes, September 2018
Successful combination of Taiwan's IT and biomedical advantages can help shape new industry ecosystems and create innovative AI-based business models at a time when the global healthcare industry records a higher ratio for investment in AI applications, according to experts at a recent forum held in Taipei.At the forum, jointly hosted by PwC Taiwan and Taipei Medical University, a representative from the government Board of Science and Technology said that the future of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries will highlight the combination of digital medicine, regenerative medicine and precision medicine technologies. The government hopes to promote the application of big data to the R&D of pharmaceuticals and the combination of biotech and pharmaceutical technologies and economy to explore new business models.PwC Taiwan vice president HC Tseng said that Taiwan is a world leader in the ICT sector and well-known for its medical services. She stressed that the country's health insurance data bank and biobank are golden data minerals for clinical information, providing the best opportunity for Taiwan to develop digital medicine and AI applications.On the same occasion, Brian Williams, PwC's global healthcare strategy director, cited the firm's 2017 Digital IQ Survey as indicating that 74% of the players in the global medical and healthcare sectors have plans to invest in AI applications in the next three years, much higher than the corresponding ratios for high tech, manufacturing and finance industries, indicating that AI will see wider and deeper applications to the healthcare and medical sectors.HC Wu, president of Asustek Cloud and Austek Healthcare, opined that in the future, data can serve as a medium for connecting patients, hospitals, makers of medical supplies, pharmaceutical makers, and contract research organizations into an industry ecosystem to create innovative business models.Frank Kung, co-founder of US-based Vivo Capital, commented that AI is really a very good tool but clear-cut business models must be worked out before the technology can be well applied to the biomedical sector. He stressed that only first-class biomedical teams can manage to collaborate with world-class firms and source sufficient funds to support medical technology innovations.
Taiwan has formulated relatively friendlier regulations governing virtual currency exchanges, which is expected to help the country's trading of digital tokens expand significantly, according to David Pan, president of ACE Exchange, a digital asset trading platform.Speaking at Global Blockchain Smart Application Forum held recently in Taipei, Pan said that the Taiwan government has regarded digital currencies as a kind of commercial merchandise and allowed initial coin offering (ICO) launches. In addition, the government has been active in pushing for self-regulated practices by operators of digital token trading houses while also moving to build related supervision mechanisms.Pan said all these efforts are expected to significantly drive up Taiwan's daily digital currency exchange turnover, now averaging only around NT$100 million (US$3.25 million). The figure lags far behind a corresponding equivalent of NT$12.5 billion in South Korea, although Taiwan's average daily stock exchange trading value of around NT$140 billion is similar to South Korea's.Pan cited statistics as indicating that a total of around 1,500 digital currencies have been issued around the world so far, and their total market values amounted to US$441.3 billion as of the end of March 2018. Of the currencies, Bitcoin commanded the highest portion, at around 40% or US$176.1 billion, of the market values with an issuance volume of 16.89 million units, compared with 19% and US$84 billion for Ether, 8% and US$35.4 billion for Ripple, and 2% for Litecoin.At the moment, 44% of digital coin trading is denominated in Japanese yen and 35% in the US dollar, compared to the previous dominance of Chinese yuan as a main currency traded for virtual tokens.
Four startup business accelerators, BE Accelerator, Center of Industry Accelerator and Patent Strategy (IAPS), SOSV-MOX, and ParkLabs Taipei, will be stationed at Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) in Taipei, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).The MOST-established TTA, through integrating Taiwan's resources in boosting startups and establishing linkage with international accelerators, aims to broaden local startups' global reach and promote international exchange and cooperation in a bid to hike its competitiveness in international startup ecosystem, MOST minister Chen Liang-gee indicated.BE Accelerator focuses on incubation in areas of medical care and biotechnology and has cooperated with large hospitals and clinics around the world to tap the Taiwan and Southeast Asia markets.Since establishment in 2013, IAPS has accelerated more than 500 startup businesses and raised venture capital of nearly US$30 million every year. Through TTA, IAPS will help link startups to the France, Japan and Southeast Asia markets.SOSV-MOX is sponsored by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm SOSV which manages global venture capital of US$400 million and has set up seven accelerators in seven cities around the world including the one at TTA. SOSV-MOX's incubation focuses on development of mobile apps, platforms and services to help startups tap emerging smartphone markets.Originating from Silicon Valley, SparkLabs Taipei focuses incubation on IoT (Internet of Things), AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, blockchain, digital medical care and agricultural technology. For a selected startup business, SparkLabs Taipei makes investment of US$40,000 for a stake of up to 6%.A total of 52 startups (29 from Taiwan and 23 from other countries) will be stationed at TTA by the end of September 2018 and MOST hopes that the number can increase to 100 by the end of the year. Accelerators will provide business startup courses, counseling services, introduction of venture capital investment for qualified startups.
Wonders Information, a major smart city service provider in Shanghai, China, is aggressively utilizing such newly emerging technologies as cloud computing, big data, IoT, and mobile Internet to work out comprehensive smart city solutions, according to company chairman and president Shi Yibing.Shi told Digitimes in a recent interview that since its inception in 1995, Wonders Information has made it a management philosophy to better human lives with informatization, with its business transformation driven by innovations. Over the past 23 years, the company has amassed abundant experiences in various industries and developed prominent advantages in industry software and services, including many cloud services associated with smart city solutions.Through its medical healthcare cloud platform, for instance, Wonders has served around 600 million people in China, having established a solid foundation for medical big data. Its healthcare cloud platform has established connections with hundreds of public hospitals and medical service institutes, and has processed more than 20PB of data.Shi said that through healthcare IoT devices deployed at communities by his company's medical healthcare cloud platform, residents can conduct physical checkups on their own, such as checking their blood sugar and blood pressure. The ensuing data can be transmitted to the cloud platform via IoT devices, thus facilitating connections between residents and contracted physicians. So far, Wonders healthcare cloud has extended services to a total of 241 community healthcare units in all the 16 administrative districts in Shanghai.Citizen cloudThe company's citizen cloud is a one-stop public service platform for citizen users registered with real names, built with cloud computing and mobile Internet technologies. With an open service architecture, the platform has developed a brand-new service ecosystem integrating government services and social services, able to handle real-name ID verifications, online-to-offline services, and multi-end accesses, among others.As of the end of August 2018, the company's Shanghai citizen cloud has recorded 9.2 million registered users, providing 120 services to citizens through 34 connected administrative service units spread in all the districts of Shanghai. The Shanghai citizen cloud will release its 6.0 version in late September, allowing individual citizens and enterprises to get administration services through mobile Internet, which will be as convenient for them as making online purchases. The citizen cloud service has been well recognized by many other governments of all levels and citizens in China, according to Shi.In terms of medical AI applications, Wonders will move to further develop smart mobile medical care, new pharmaceuticals and new medical insurance, medical big data applications, and health management.Wonders will also step up big data applications to smart city security, smart transportation, smart transportation and smart market monitoring fields while also deepening the establishment and operation of enterprise clouds to optimize business environments, according to Shi.Reputable accreditationsFurthermore, the company will continue to work out precision core business systems in various industries in smart cities while applying those solutions well received in the coastal areas to other provinces, such as those for medical care, administrative services, and market monitoring, among others.The company has many highly reliable, safe and useful cloud services available for use on a rental basis. It has won the IDC cloud service license issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the public cloud computing capability compliance certificate from the Information Technology Service Sub-association of Chinese Electronics Standardization, and passed the cloud host reliability and safety accreditations by the Open Data Center Alliance, Shi disclosed.Shi stressed that on the basis of its grand smart city platform, Wonders will also expand cooperation with ecosystem partners of different industries to jointly develop new products and new business models and cultivate unicorns in the fields of citizen cloud, healthcare cloud, pharmaceutical cloud, financial insurance cloud, and more.Wonders Information chairman Shi YibingPhoto: Company
Successfully starting his own business twice, Gwong Lee, managing director, Translink Capital, sold his second firm for a high price 15 months after its establishment and he was named one of Silicon Valley's top-10 most important persons of the year. Afterwards, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou invited Lee to serve as chairman of CyberTAN, a Foxconn subsidiary, and guide Foxconn Technology Group's investment deals. Drawing on his entrepreneurship experiences, Lee offers some thoughts and advice for Taiwan startups.Without a market, even a strong startup team is uselessTranslink Capital mainly invests in US-based startups during Series A and Series B rounds and helps them build partnerships with leading Asian high-tech firms. Lee pointed out as many Taiwan-based firms are looking to transform themselves in hopes of spurring further growth and Silicon Valley has a host of startups that can inspire large enterprises with ideas for new business models, they can join forces. Translink Capital currently works with Taiwan-based firms including Foxconn, Quanta, Inventec and UMC.When evaluating whether a startup is worth investing in, Lee mainly considers three aspects: the market, the product and the leader. Among them, the market is the most critical factor. Without a market, even a strong startup team has no use. In 1987, Lee started his first business, Digicom Systems, specializing in point-to-point communication by integrating digital signal processing chips in products to replace traditional devices. Digicom Systems was an instant hit and got OEM orders from AT&T in its second year of operation. In the five years from 1988 to 1993, AT&T remained the biggest customer contributing to more than half of Digicom Systems' revenue. Still new at entrepreneurship at that time, Lee thought technology was the key to his success and customers would automatically come to him if he had the technology they were after. Paying no attention to market needs, he made no customer visit at all in six years. In retrospect, Lee regrets not making efforts to strength customer relationships and understand market needs as well as customer plans. If he had done so, Digicom Systems might have had more opportunities. Fortunately, Digicom Systems was acquired by Singapore-based Creative Labs in 1994, which turned out to be a happy ending.When starting his second business, TransMedia, in 1997, Lee was well aware of customer needs and TransMedia could develop products in as short as 15 months and began proof-of-concept validation with customers. Cisco Systems then acquired TransMedia for US$500 million. 3Com and Nortel were among those that also bid for TransMedia at the time. Lee suggests that startups select buyers not just based on the offer price but should also consider if they share a common business philosophy and comparable professional capabilities, which will sustain their future development together or else there may be compatibility problems after the merger.Whether a startup has a right product is the second consideration in investment decision-making. A startup team must find the right people to make the product or find a mentor to provide guidance. Many startups can design a good product but don't know the first thing about hardware or system so they can only outsource product manufacturing. However, it can be a challenge to manage OEM and control product quality, indicated Lee.The third factor is the team and the leader. Lee places importance on three leadership qualities: pioneering spirit, persistence and focus. In particular, he said many entrepreneurs are full of ideas and want to do a lot of things. Without focus, they have too much on their plate and end up achieving nothing due to limited resources. They put out too many products but have no one in charge of promoting them. The results are certainly unsatisfactory. As such, it is important to have focus.Applications combining hardware, software and cloud are suitable for Taiwan startupsThe investment deals that Lee is currently overseeing at Translink Capital center on Industry 4.0, IoT, AI, machine learning, AR/VR and industrial applications. In general, he favors startups that already have customers. A startup pitch with only a few presentation slides or prototypes will unlikely secure any funding.Half of the firms that Translink Capital has a stake in also receive funding from corporate venture capital of Translink Capital's partners. They provide different perspectives that complement the investment deals made by corporate venture capital of Translink Capital's partners, which may sometimes be too focused on certain areas to have an overview.With respect to the startup ideas for Taiwan, Lee suggests the combination of hardware, software and cloud. The omnipresent Internet has been around for two decades but Taiwan has yet to foster any outstanding Internet companies with the only exception being PChome. Most software engineers work for the semiconductor industry, resulting in a poorly developed software industry. As such, now for active startup developments, Lee advises Taiwan startups make efforts toward applications combining hardware, software and cloud.It is never easy to start a business. One of Lee's friends has extensive experiences in funding high-tech firms. The friend has invested in HP, Intel and Apple and received handsome return but has also engaged in 50 angel investment deals that all failed. Although Lee rarely does angel investing, he will join the game in Pre-A round funding if he sees a team with very good potential. Whether an angel investment deal can succeed hinges on the angel investor's experience and connection. Even if the angel investor is not funding a business in his own field of expertise, his business know-how, such as management of cash flow, logistics, product R&D and talent recruitment, can still apply to different industries.As a final piece of advice, Lee emphasizes that startups must have a clear go-to-market strategy, including sales channels, marketing and pricing plans, as well as how to build the visibility of the startup in the marketplace. Only one out of 10 startups receiving angel investment gets to proceed to Series A funding. Whether you end up being the one or among the remaining nine depends on how well prepared you are.(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.)Gwong Lee, managing director of Translink CapitalPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018
