Huawei has recently announced in Bangkok, Thailand its plan to invest US$81 million over the next three years to help foster a local ICT ecosystem. The move shed light on the company's strategy to expand into ASEAN markets and create a digital economy ecosystem. Amid the upcoming 5G era, many Taiwan-based ICT businesses are eager to build digital ecosystems and can learn from the aspiration and vision shown in Huawei's recent strategy.Huawei's investment plan in Southeast Asia will focus on building OpenLabs, enabling cloud developers and cultivating ICT talent in the region. The intricate planning behind Huawei's move to beat competitors to 5G IoT opportunities in northern ASEAN member states is particularly of interest. Why did Huawei choose Thailand? What was the reasoning behind this strategy?The speech given by Huawei's rotating chairman Ping Guo at the fourth Annual Huawei Asia-Pacific Innovation Day, co-hosted by the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) of Thailand and Huawei, provided an insight into the company's strategy to leverage Thailand to create a 5G digital ecosystem in Southeast Asia markets with different languages, cultures, demographics and infrastructures.With maturing IoT, cloud computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, increasing semiconductor processing power and decreasing data storage costs, the businesses that are able to combine these high-tech advances for platform or ecosystem developments will have the best chance to reap big benefits. However, is such a platform or ecosystem only good for e-commerce applications? It is clear that Huawei holds a different view.What Huawei is promoting is no longer an Internet ecosystem but a digital ecosystem. According to an analyst who has been following Huawei for years, its NB-IoT technologies and cloud computing services have enabled water purification equipment providers to monitor filter condition, water meter suppliers to achieve smart meter reading, greenhouse shelving to have smart temperature, humidity and ventilation control and streetlights to have automatic brightness adjustment. Huawei has positioned itself to be an enabler of the IoT era.In agreement with Huawei's strategy, Thailand's deputy prime minister Somkid Jatusripitak said at the Huawei Asia-Pacific Innovation Day event that amid the country's efforts to transition toward digital economy, it is hoped that Huawei will help Thailand capture opportunities in 5G, NB-IoT, AI and big data analytics and accelerate Thailand's economic growth.Huawei selects Thailand as the center for expansion outward to northern ASEAN member statesWhy Thailand? A high population density plays a critical role in 5G and IoT developments while a high network speed is also important. Thailand has a population of 68 million people and 8.28 million of them live in Bangkok, which is expected to become a mega city with a more than 10 million population within five years, according to a Thai research institute.According to data released by the National Statistical Office of Thailand in 2017, 70% of people in Bangkok and 76% of people in the less developed northeastern region use smartphones and 90% of Internet users get online through their smartphones. Young people in Thailand are also heavy users of social media. Thailand has superior network infrastructure among Southeast Asia countries, only second to Singapore. According to American Internet broadband testing company Ookla, Thailand has an average network speed of 19.96Mbps, leading Vietnam (14.2Mbps), Cambodia (5.9Mbps), Brunei (5.51Mbps), Myanmar (5.0Mbps), Laos (4.5Mbps), Indonesia (4.3Mbps) and the Philippines (3.5Mbps).Why did the Thai government choose Huawei as a partner for its Thailand 4.0 initiative? Huawei has put in tremendous efforts and resources to present its technologies and interfaces in local languages. Thanks to such a high level of localization, Huawei is enthusiastically embraced by consumers and governments of the 10 ASEAN member states with diverse cultures and languages.Why is it important to obtain the local government's support? In a digital economy, it has become a major public concern over who has control of the data, what they will use the data for and where they will store the data. For this reason, the EU has implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Southeast Asia countries including Indonesia and Vietnam have also begun to require that sensitive data such as banking and healthcare data be stored in servers located domestically. Accordingly, without the local government's trust and authorization, it is difficult to obtain the data needed for research and development.Platform economy must be a joint effortHuawei already elaborated on the digital ecosystem it intends to create at Huawei Connect 2016. In Bangkok, Guo mentioned again the Costa Rica ecosystem. That is, Huawei is committed to enabling an open and diverse digital ecosystem that is like the "Costa Rica ecosystem," allowing all stakeholders including partners and customers grow and prosper together. The number of new species in biodiversity-rich Costa Rica is increasing faster than in other ecosystems in the world. For example, wildlife diversity is growing 10 times faster in Costa Rica than in Hawaii.Guo clearly said that in the Internet era, digital economy was only beginning to take shape without a fully developed ecosystem concept so the build-up of ICT infrastructure and ICT security relied on supply chain vendors. However, as digital economy develops into an advanced stage, wherein it supports digitization and smartization of multiple industries, collaborations across sectors, borders and end devices become necessary. It is also imperative to have an open ecosystem as well as full support and engagement by governments around the world. Guo pointed out that IoT and digitization in all sectors including transportation, agriculture, tourism, education, industry, manufacturing and maritime entails more extensive, open and win-win cross-ecosystem collaborations. It can hardly be achieved by any individual company or vendor alone by itself.Due to its Chinese military background, Huawei has to deal with American and European governments' long-standing distrust but faces little such issue in Southeast Asia countries that have urgent needs for infrastructure investments and high-tech talent.Huawei is working with ecosystem partners including independent software vendors (ISV) as well as Call Voice, CDG and Tatung to keep bringing innovative solutions to reality. They have jointly developed industrial applications for specific use scenarios such as smart surveillance systems, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) integrating control functions and smart grid as well as smart industrial park network. Huawei's OpenLab Bangkok has four laboratories working toward smart city, public safety and smart grid innovations, partnership projects and proof of concept (POC) testing.Huawei has seven OpenLab R&D centers around the world, which is a realization of the "Costa Rica ecosystem" concept. The establishment of the 7th OpenLab in Bangkok on June 1, 2017 has allowed Huawei to make its own ICT achievements available to customers and partners. OpenLab Bangkok can offer ICT training for 800 persons, ICT career certification for 500 persons and 150 items of POC testing every year. It also serves as Huawei's innovation accelerator, hosting 20 groups of ICT startups for on-site visit and exchange of opinions every year. Centering on Bangkok, Huawei is expanding its support for high-tech startup and talent incubation outward to other regions in Thailand and neighboring countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.In brief, in the times of digital economy, working alone will not lead to success. Huawei, already a dominant market leader, believes it will not be able to realize an IoT and digital ecosystem by itself. Neither can Taiwan-based companies.Huawei believes digital economy entails extensive, open and win-win collaborations across sectors, borders and end devicesPhoto: Digitimes file photo

For manufacturers seeking to achieve production automation with robotic arms, how to achieve collaborative operation between robots and peripheral automation equipment will be a more crucial task than incorporating robots into their production lines, and the task can be best handled through localized system integration service from robot suppliers or their cooperative partners, according to industry experts.YD Kuo, chairman of LNC Technology, an affiliate of industrial PC and automation solution specialist Advantech, said robot suppliers had better provide localized system integration services to help Taiwan customers solve related operating problems. Kuo said his company once helped a local company engaged in plastic injection molding business smoothen the operation of its robotic arms by installing image sensors on the robots, within just one week after getting a consent from the supplier of robots. He said the sensors can help the robots perform more accurate and precision object-grabbing operations.Kuo continued that dedicated to developing diverse automation control systems including those for lathes, milling machines, grinding machines, and plastics injection molding machines, LNC has also helped a local maker of bicycle parts address the frequent collisions between robot arms and lathes seen on the production lines due to poor coordination.Peter Peng, director of Robotics Automation Business Department of Industrial Automation Business Goup at Delta Electronics, also said that most manufacturers in Taiwan usually demand robotics automation solutions that can cater to their production process, guarantee fast investment returns and boast a long life cycle to support follow-up changes.But the real engineering task based on customer requirements is not easy to do, Peng said, adding that a communication platform between robot suppliers and customers should therefore be established first with the support of related software programs, so that both sides can simulate equipment, systems and production flows on an experimental basis and then work out the optimal robotics automation solutions.

Sales in the global semiconductor-grade silicon wafer market are forecast to rise over 20% in 2018, after surging 20.8% in 2017, thanks to a continued rally in silicon wafer prices, according to Digitimes Research.The average selling price (ASP) per square inch of silicon wafers came to US$0.86 in the first quarter of 2018 reaching the highest since 2013, said Digitimes Research. The ASP is expected to reach US$1 at the end of 2019, approaching the 2009-2011 level.With silicon wafer ASPs looking promising, suppliers are set to enjoy profit growth over the next several years, Digitimes Research indicated.Top silicon wafer company Shin-Etsu saw its operating margin climb to 32.2% in the first quarter of 2018, up from 31.2% in the prior quarter and 24.7% a year earlier, while second-ranked Sumco's operating margin grew 6.4pp sequentially and 11.9pp on year to 25.3%. Shih-Etsu and Sumco collectively hold a more than 50% share of the global silicon wafer market.Taiwan-based GlobalWafers, the world's third-largest silicon wafer supplier, saw its operating margin swing to 10.1% in the first quarter of 2017 from negative 3.7% in the fourth quarter of 2016. GlobalWafers' operating margin continued its rally reaching 28.2% in the first quarter of 2018.The supply of silicon wafers particularly that of 8- and 12-inch ones will remain tight for at least one to two years, according to Digitimes Research. Whether the tight supply will persist after 2020 will very much depend on the demand side. Industrial, IoT and automotive applications will play major drivers of demand for 8-inch wafers, while demand for 12-inch wafers will come from mainly the cloud storage and smartphone segments.

Wretch Chien, principal of AME Cloud Venture, was himself an entrepreneur when he founded a community website Wretch.cc in Taiwan. Since then his career has taken several turns, taking him from Taiwan to Silicon Valley: he joined Yahoo Taiwan after his website was acquired by Yahoo; he later traveled to Silicon Valley to work for Yahoo US; and then he left the company to study at Stanford University where he obtained an MBA. Chien is now a venture capitalist.With his experience working in Taiwan and Silicon Valley, Chien recently shared with Digitimes his views about the steps Taiwan should take to promote entrepreneurship in the era of knowledge economy.He believes Taiwan's success should not rely on a game of guessing the next star industries and Taiwan's innovation should not be forcibly connected with its existing cutting edges in hardware. What Taiwan needs to focus on is to incubate internationalized talent and encourage its people to think the unimaginable in order for them to create values.Talent incubation is the basis to tap into the knowledge economyCommenting on the recent entrepreneurship hype in Taiwan, Chien said the country has missed out on the Internet era's golden 30 years, while its competitors including South Korea, Israel and Singapore - all of which were originally on the same level as Taiwan - have all made achievements in digital innovations with clear leads over Taiwan.To catch up with the competitors and solve Taiwan's internal problems - such as low salary levels and slow industrial transformations - the Taiwan government has been actively encouraging its young people to start entrepreneurship and has even provided advice as to what areas they could tagret.However, despite the government's aggressiveness, entrepreuners have rarely addressed some of the fundamental questions: whether they truly want to have a business of their own; whether they are suitable for doing entrepreneurship; and whether Taiwan's economic conditions can support entrepreneurship.It is a completely different story in Silicon Valley, which Taiwan has been eagerly trying to re-connect with and learn from, Chien said. It does not have government assistance identifying their targets, and all people and companies there have an equal chance of achieving success no matter what types of industry or field they wish to get into, as long as they have profound understanding of their target areas and have been working on providing solutions to problems that have not yet been solved.For these companies, the best of them would succeed when the time comes. In the past 60 years, companies that have been said to be the pioneers of their sectors, such as Fairchild, Intel, Apple, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Cisco, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb, all have followed a similar path to success, cultivating in their specific areas for many years and waiting for their moments to comeOf these renowned enterprises, over half of their founders are not from the US and are even speaking their native languages at home, showing Silicon Valley's effort of incubating internationalized talent.Take Stanford University for example. Up to 30% of those studying there are international students, meaning that every student at Stanford has a chance to meet other students from different cultural backgrounds. Such a cultural diversity requires students to improve their communications and management skills - assets that they will need when founding their own companies later. And their connections back at school can serve as a bridge in their network for recruiting talent into their companies.Many believe that Taiwan should create new economic values by using its existing advantages and leveraging its hardware expertise - a direction many entrepreneurs have been ecouraged to head towards. But Chien personally does not fully agree to such a path. He believes in the era of knowledge economy the creation of values is not necessarily based on continuity.Taiwan should try to think outside the box and develop emerging and unimaginable applications, but the key driver for such innovation is internationalized talent, which is what Taiwan lacks the most, he said. Instead of placing large amount of resources trying to create a next-generation industry, the government should broaden its view and try to build Taiwan into a center of talent exchange in Asia, attracting international students with potential to study in Taiwan and send Taiwan's top students to study abroad.Use imagination to identify entrepreneurship targets outside the boxAME Cloud Ventures, where Chien works at, currently focuses primarily on early-stage venture capital cases. He noted that the firm's investments in early-stage startups are decided completely by personal factors concerning business founders, especially their capabilities of presenting business concepts and targets, telling good stories and having good communication skills to convice venture capitalists they are can work together.AME considers itself a learning-type of venture capital and makes investments based on its interests at specific times to identify opportunities. For example, the understanding of how a robot system works allowed AME to recognize the potential of the minimally invasive surgery robot market. It then became interested in medical care-related subjects and turned aggressive in explore the opportunities from artificial intelligence (AI) doctor applications.As for what startups need to be aware of when seeking assistance from venture capital, Chien noted that startup founders must be clear about their targets and directions in order to know where they can get funding. Venture capital is not the only source of assistance. Company CEO and COO that the founders hire or government funding could also provide startups with needed support.Chien pointed out that venture capital may not be a good choice for some startups, as venture capital tends to demand high profit sharing because of the risks they face. Entrepreneurship cases which promise high growth potential and profitability but offer little information about the ways of achieving the goals - except for presentations and briefings - usually have limited resources of support due to the risks involved. But such cases are more suitable targets for venture capital.He added that entrepreneurs should not start out with the primary goal of attracting venture capital. If the founders have identified the right areas of development,the right investors would come knocking on their doors.Chien believes that Taiwan should learn to accept the fact there is a variety of innovation, and not to force a connection between Taiwan's existing strength and innovation. People who decide to have a go at entrepreneurship should not limit their imagination or limit their targets to those deemd suitable for Taiwan. They should think clearly first whether they have actually located the problems that have not yet been solved, and whether they are able to resolve them.If the answer is yes, the startup founders should find the right teams to create the products and carefully work out strategic plans to expand the companies' profitability and market scale.(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.)Wretch Chien, principal at AME Cloud VenturesPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII), a subsidiary of Foxconn Group (Hon Hai), recently launched its initial public offering (IPO) in China at CNY13.77 (US$2.08). However, FII's share price failed to perform in line with expectation, tumbling from the closing price of CNY25.7 on the first day of trading to CNY18.21 on June 25 at closing. The sliding share price casts a shadow of doubt over future developments of Foxconn and FII.Market observers had expected Foxconn chairman Terry Gou to address investors' concerns at the company's annual shareholders meeting on June 22. Rather than giving a direct response, Gou only commented the company would not interfere in the free and fair operation of the stock market. But he did give a positive outlook on Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) developments.Gou emphasized IIoT, integrating real and digital economy, is the right way to go.Gou also repeatedly mentioned that the US-China trade war is not about trade, but it is a tech war and also a manufacturing war. Gou said the Internet was used as a social network for communication between people in the early days. Later it was used for communication between people and devices, for example, to enable online shopping. All the Internet advances require the support of the manufacturing industry. With today's focus being on cross-device communication, IIoT developments aim to eliminate intermediary steps that are dispensable and further create new needs and opportunities.By elaborating on IIoT backgrounds and characteristics, Gou tried to give the investors at the meeting a sense of IIoT future development and market potential while detailing Foxconn and FII's IIoT investments and achievements.For example, he explained the differences between the artificial intelligence (AI) technologies his company is developing and the common AI technologies referenced by the market in terms of data, applications, data technology (DT), platform technology (PT), analytics technology (AT) and operation technology (OT).Although Gou repeatedly highlighted that his corporation has the world's most comprehensive physical manufacturing platform as well as core expertise and technologies in manufacturing, which is instrumental to driving widespread AI industrial applications, investors still had no clue as to how actual benefits and profits could be generated from Gou's vision.Innovative technologies and new business models generally develop at a slower pace in the beginning as the market needs to be expanded or people are still taking a wait-and-see attitude. When the technology or market becomes mature, the costs will come down and explosive growth can follow.China and many countries worldwide are engaging in efforts to bring automation and digitization to make manufacturing smart. However, even China, making the most aggressive efforts, only has limited IIoT adoption. The five major certified platforms are currently largely used within the corporations that developed them, with limited commercial use by other companies.For example, Gou said many times Foxconn has six lights-out factories in operation under IIoT framework. The number may seem quite substantial, but for a company that has so many production lines and manufacturing plants, the number is actually disappointing.Yet the six lights-out factories still clearly demonstrate how IIoT can be put to practical use and that there is a massive potential market for FII. As long as China stays on the course set in its Made in China 2025 initiative, FII can expect a constant revenue stream. After all, the Foconn Group's internal demand alone could be sufficient to support FII.FII may not be able to push widespread IIoT adoption, but it should not have any difficulties staying alive.For the investors of Foxconn or FII, the real question may not be about what Foxconn or FII will be doing, but about when the IIoT market will really take off. For Foxconn and FII, who are banking on IIoT to support their transformation, must make sure they are fully ready when the market takes off.Foxconn chairman Terry Gou Photo: Shihmin Fu, Digitimes, June 2018

Currently the CTO of Taiwan's Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency (ASVDA), TC Wu had spent 35 years working in the bona fide Silicon Valley's semiconductor industry. He retired from Atmel, a semiconductor design and manufacturing company he had founded, after it was acquired by Microchip in 2016. But then he showed his commitment to assisting Taiwan's entrepreneurship and innovation development by joining the non-profit Silicon Valley Taiwan (SVT) Angels organization while still in Silicon Valley. He later returned to Taiwan and accepted the job at ASVDA.Wu believes startups need to deeply understand its core targets and try to create their own unique values in the form of world-class products in order to be successful.Values from the trade-off the key determination for angel investorsAfter leaving Atmel, where he had worked for 31 years, Wu actively participated in SVT Angels' activities, getting involed in many investment and mentoring cases. Wu said his evaluations of the projects looked at the traits of these startups' founders and teams, the newly founded companies' potentials in the market, and their niche advantages in the competition.Wu had gained rich experience during his career in Silicon Valley with the company he founded having gone public, acquired other firms and eventually acquired by Microchip. He hopes to pass down his experience to Taiwan's startups to help them grow.Thanks to his long work as an angel investor, Wu is confident about his capability of being able to quickly identify the nature of a startup's products or services. Most entrepreneurship cases - except for those whose products have never been seen before - belong to the "trade-off" type, which is more of an improvement than an innovation, according to Wu. Simply put, the product developers have sacrificed a certain part of the old things in the products in exchange for some other benefits or efficiency. And he has to determine whether the trade-offs are of any value.An entrepreneurship team's quality is another key evaluation factor for Wu, who disclosed that he has seen many Taiwan-based startups lacking real passion for entrepreneurship. Some of them only wanted to apply for government subsidies and some organized a team purely for participation in an innovation competition. Such teams usually do not have any idea about the difficulties they may face running entrepreneurship.An ideal startup should have clear ideas of what products it wants to do and what issues its products can address, so as to make sure its business direction is in line with the worldwide trends. With the goal decided, it needs to determine how to materialize the products, what kind of team to organize and how to gradually integrate the resources for market expansion - these combine to form clear strategic guidelines for the team to follow, Wu explained.Unfortunately, many Taiwan's entrepreneurship teams lack such a comprehensive understanding of their work, said Wu. Some Taiwan researchers design their chips as if building a car with all basic components such as tires, a body, and a driving wheel. But the chips still lack market potential, because if the chips are only equipped with the basic components and do not have any innovative or special features, they lack an obvious trade-off value.If a chip features a special power-saving design that consumes 1.5W or less for a doing a job that other similar-grade competitions need at least 5W to do, then the chip can be called a world-class product, possessing a niche in the market.Successful entrepreneurship depends on right subject, talent and directionFor new product R&D, startups in fact have a much higher chance of success than large enterprises, noted Wu. The key difference lies in their employees. Although startups are much smaller in scale compared to large enterprises, they would put everything they have into the development of new products, with their best teams giving all-out efforts, working 24-7.On the other hand, large enterprises often invest the majority of their resources in to core businesses and only assign minor teams to develop new projects, which means innovation has far less chance of happening at large enterprises, giving startups and small-to-medium enterprises an advantage.That does not mean startups do not have similar problems that need to be solved. If their products encounter problems, the startups usually need to shift some of their best personnel from the "A" or "A+" teams to handle customer services, which would distract their concentration from R&D. Entrepreneurship must always be prepared to handle such a crisis immediately, Wu said.Wu was motivated to join ASVDA by his desire to help startups find angel investors and and improve their efficiency. ASVDA is able to quickly arrange suitable angel investors to connect with specific entrepreneurship cases for them to provide assistance and investments, Wu added.Compared to Silicon Valley's startups, which may burn up to US$1-2 million for their initial operation, those in Taiwan require far less in funding, and a NT$10 million (US$326,800) investment is able to support their operation for two years, while their demand for profit sharing is also significantly lower. However, funding is not the only factor influencing the development of a startup, and the key to success still depends on whether the startup is able to find the right target, talent and direction.Wu also noted that the Taiwan government has allocated many resources looking to assist Taiwan startups' operation. But Wu believes using government resources has its drawback. Although government funding is able to quickly ease a startup's financial shortage, the need to work out a proposal to secure government support means the startup needs to shift some of its attention to non-operating matters, which may obstruct the startup from pushing forward fully.To have a niche in the market, the startups must have R&D faster than others, products with strong values in terms of trade-off, and the capability of doing what others so far have not yet been able to.(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.)TC Wu, CTO of Asia Silicon Valley Development AgencyPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

In an effort to better serve both the supply and demand sides involved in health examination, Taiwan-based Medicrowd Smarthealth has recently set up a medical service platform to facilitate exchanges and communications between those who need physical checkup services and providers of such services.LJ Chen, director of Medicrowd's user development and service team, said that through the match-making platform, consumers can find out health examination organizations whose services can best meet their needs, while the organizations can utilize diverse management functions and tools provided by Medicrowd to optimize their services. So far, over 60 health examination institutions around Taiwan have signed up to use the platform, and consumers can first answer questionnaires on their physical conditions and then find out which institutions are nearest to them and also able to serve them best, according to Chen.She continued that the platform can not only serve as a new promotional channel for health examination institutions, but can also add values to the checkup reports by helping them with detailed analyses.The platform also provides consumers with consulting services from medical experts to clear their doubts about the reports and get proper physical exercise and diet proposals. Medicrowd will also invite nutritionists and physiotherapists to join the consulting service team in the near future, Chen indicated.Consumers can also use the platform to carry out their own health management, as the platform can automatically compile their health examination reports for users to compare their current and past health conditions.

Asia Pacific is on track to become the world's largest 5G region by 2025, led by pioneering 5G markets such as Australia, China, Japan and South Korea, according to the latest edition of the GSMA's Mobile Economy report.Launches of commercial 5G networks in these markets beginning next year will see the Asia region reach 675 million 5G connections by 2025, more than half of the global 5G total expected by that point. Asia's move to state-of-the-art mobile broadband networks reflects the mobile ecosystem's growing value to the region's economy. According to the report, Asia's mobile industry added US$1.5 trillion in economic value last year, equivalent to 5.4% of regional GDP."The Asia Pacific region has experienced rapid migration to mobile broadband networks and smartphones over recent years and is now set to play a pioneering role as we move into the 5G era," said Mats Granryd, GSMA director general, as cited in a press release. "Mobile operators in Asia will invest almost US$200 billion over the next few years in upgrading and expanding their 4G networks and launching new 5G networks in order to accelerate the growth of Asia's digital economies and societies."Asia 4G to grow rapidly ahead of 5G commercialisationThe early 5G launches in Asia, based on 3GPP Release 15, are expected to focus on enhanced mobile broadband services, supplementing the capacity and capabilities of existing mobile broadband networks, particularly in dense urban areas, the report says. However, 5G's next phase (3GPP Release 16) will lay the foundation to support a range of future 5G use cases and innovations, including massive connectivity and low-latency services such as Internet of Things (IoT), critical communication services (such as remote surgery, autonomous vehicles, smart grids) and virtual reality (VR).As 5G commercialisation approaches, 4G also continues to grow rapidly and is now Asia's dominant mobile technology. The region is home to some of the world's most advanced 4G markets in terms of adoption, such as Japan and South Korea, as well as emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, which are seeing an accelerating migration to 4G. By 2025, it is expected that 62% of Asia's mobile connections will be running on 4G networks and 14% on 5G, says the report.More than half of the world's mobile subscribers live in Asia Pacific, which is home to the world's two largest mobile markets, China and India. At the end of last year, there were 2.7 billion unique mobile subscribers in Asia, equivalent to about 67% of the region's population. This number is forecast to grow to 3.2 billion (73% of population) by 2025, with about half of the new subscribers added over this period coming from India.Mobile industry a growing contributor to Asia's economyThe Asia Pacific mobile industry's US$1.5 trillion economic contribution in 2017 includes the direct impact of the mobile ecosystem as well as the indirect impact and the boost in productivity brought about by the increased use of mobile services and technologies. Mobile's contribution to Asia's GDP is set to rise to US$1.8 trillion by 2022. according to the GSMA report. In addition, the mobile ecosystem supported more than 17 million jobs last year, directly and indirectly, and made a substantial contribution to the funding of the public sector, with almost US$170 billion raised in the form of general taxation.

Chairman of Acorn Campus Taiwan Wu-Fu Chen, with a record of having founded 13 companies within a 15-year period and having all of them either acquired or listed, clearly showed his passion and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship during a recent interview by Digitimes. And he gave an in-depth analysis based on his experience on what would be the best industries for Taiwan to invest its resources in for entrepreneurship and made some suggestions to Taiwan's young-generation entrepreneurs and its government.Medical technologies and drones are the best entrepreneurial areas for TaiwanChen said that providing financial support for entrepreneurs is only a small part of the work for angel investors, whose true value lies in their help to find potential clients and partners, seek management talent, look for more funding and give suggestions and strategic advices. While in Silicon Valley, Chen assisted a group of international students from China to establish an entrepreneurship team called Innolight. The team's main products were optical communication modules that were originally designed to be used during component testing.Chen later recommended the team to Google's datacenter business unit which needed such a module for in-house assembly of the tech giant's equipment. Because of Google's strong demand for the module, the entrepreneurship team eventually received investments from Google, and its annual revenues have now reached US$1 billion.Chen also made many investments in companies in the medical care sector, including Eureka Therapeutics, a biotech pharmaceutical firm devoted to research of T-cell cancer treatment. Via its technical platform, users are able to create immune cells combining with antibody to kill cancer cells.Another case Chen invested in was Crown Bioscience International, a contract research organization (CRO). CROs' services are a rather important part of the pharmaceutical industry's ecosystem, helping accelerate new medicines' development. The company went public on Taiwan's over-the-counter (OTC) market after Chen suggested the team come to Taiwan for IPO.The company did not perform well in Taiwan, whose political climate at the time was not friendly toward the biotechnology industry and the company was later acquired by a Japan-based firm, he said.Despite the failures to link up the two companies with Taiwan investors, Chen still believes medical technology and digital medical care are the two application fields that Taiwan's entrepreneurs should seriously consider. Taiwan's entrepreneurs should gear up efforts developing Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The high standards of Taiwan's medical care services, and its advanced micro-electromechanical technologies give the country a competitive edge in medical care equipment R&D with constructive collaboration between doctors and engineers.Chen said the development of medical care equipment sees almost no limits, with new applications such as optical examination and image analysis keep emerging.Drones are another promising sector for Taiwan. In addition to entertainment, the flying machines are a hardware platform that can be applied in both commercial and industrial fields. Since drones for the two fields require support from precision machinery - a business Taiwan is strong at - investing in drone businesses should be a good target for Taiwan's entrepreneurs.The government and startups should be preparedChen encouraged entrepreneurs that want to begin their own businesses to be prepared both mentally and practically. Entrepreneurs should be mentally prepared for any unexpected problems, devoted to what they want to do, and look for suitable mentors for assistance.Chen pointed out that for entrepreneurship, changes are the only "constant." If entrepreneurs are mentally prepared for any accidents and anomalies, they will be able to resolve the problems more calmly. Entrepreneurs should learn to treat frustration as a learning experience instead of a failure, Chen added.Furthermore, entrepreneurship work is unlike regular jobs, and entrepreneurs need to obtain their families' support in order to overcome difficulties. Finding mentors can raise entrepreneurs' confident, helping them achieve a sense of approval. Mentors can also act as counselors, sharing their experience and ideas with entrepreneurs to inspire new thoughts.As for the practical preparation, finding a manager with experience in business operation is necessary for an entrepreneurship team as the person is the bridge among investors, the board, the management team, employees and clients, and this person needs to have an understanding on how each of them is related to others.Most importantly, the manager needs to be able to view things from a market perspective and have an eye for worldwide markets. Most of Taiwan's entrepreneurship teams are technology-oriented, conducting their R&D without considering matters on the market side or how they can make their products more user friendly. Many of Taiwan startups' products only see demand from friendly users, and the product developers tend to respond to criticism by putting the blame on users' failure to operate their products properly.A manager should not consider products that satisfy solely demand from the Taiwan market, Chen said. When a product is being designed, the manager should begin considering how it can be marketed globally."The world is running fast and if Taiwan does not pick up its pace, it will be surpassed really soon," Chen noted. Speed is the key for Taiwan's success and to improve Taiwan industries' worldwide competitiveness, its government must be keenly encouraging strategic investments, providing support to early-stage entrepreneurship cases, which have higher risks of failure.The Taiwan government, Chen said, should also ease its regulations - a move it must make, judging from the two Silicon Valley-born projects he had tried to promote in Taiwan, but to no avail due to the government's slow decision-making process and response.If the government is interested in building a medical technology industry, it should also improve related clinical trial standards, adjust regulations, and invest resources to upgrade the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration's (TFDA) abilities in conducting audition and certification.(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.)Wu-Fu Chen, chairman of Acorn Campus TaiwanPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

Sleep quality detection entails big business potentials, prompting Taiwan makers to develop smart mattresses or wearable devices installed with sleep sensing systems to collect relevant data for backend medical teams to provide better healthcare solutions, and one of such makers is Green-Sweet Mattress who showcased its Power Sleep-branded smart mattresses at the just-concluded Medicare Taiwan 2018.CY Liu, president of the company, said that physicians tend to issue hypnotics to patients plagued by poor sleep quality, but taking the medicine is not their best solution as the medicine will slow the rapid eye movement (REM) of patients and undermine their normal memory and learning abilities.Liu said Green-Sweet can supply sleep sensing system on a rental basis, and users can put the system under their mattresses with a thickness of under 50cm. The system can judge the movement frequencies of users in light sleep and can also identify their shoulder or neck pains, so as to help their medical teams offer comfortable pillows or mattresses. Green-Sweet also displayed a smart mattress fitted with the sensing system at the show held June 21-24 at Hall 1, Taipei World Trade Center. After a consumer lies on the mattress, the sensing system can figure out his/her stress spread during the sleep in accordance with the data collected by the sensor and simulate his/her spine mode, thus mapping out a mattress exclusively for the consumer, according to Liu.He continued that if consumers with spine or backbone problems use the firm's smart mattresses, the company will consult with their medical teams over how to ease their problems by adjusting pillows or proposing some suitable physical exercises.Liu stressed that the value of smart healthcare solutions lies not in the collection of data, but in follow-up consultations with and support from medical teams.Green-Sweet Mattress president CY LiuPhoto: Vega Chiu, Digitimes, June 2018