Worldwide top-5 notebook brand vendors' combined shipments grew on month, but decline on year in August. With the consumer notebook sector continuing to lack new innovations to stimulate demand, the overall notebook market may see difficulties growing further by only relying on the contribution from the enterprise area.Hewlett-Packard (HP), which performed strongly in the 12 months prior to August, only had a single-digit percentage on-year shipment growth in August. Lenovo returned to number two, but its shipments went down by over 10% on year.Dell achieved on-year growth in August shipments thanks to stable demand from the enterprise sector. Asustek Computer and Acer both saw an increase of over 30% on month in August shipments, but Asustek had weaker output than in August 2016.Within the top-5 ODMs, Compal Electronics had the highest on-year growth in August thanks to orders from Lenovo and Acer, while Quanta and Pegatron also had on-year shipment growths.Wistron saw shipments decline in August as the company has been cutting its notebook manufacturing business and looking to gain profits from non-PC product lines. Inventec also suffered an on-year shipment drop because its orders from HP have been gradually taken over by competitors.

Despite the fact that Japan Display (JDI) has been operating in the red for a long time, the Japan government is unlikely to let JDI go simply because Japan's automotive electronics industry still dominates the global market, and maintaining its own panel production capacity will continue to be a market niche for Japan's electronics industry, according to Digitimes Research.For this reason, JDI has recently launched an expansion project, aiming to ramp up the production capacity of its 4G plant in Tottori, which focuses on automotive panels, to 54,000 substrates a month from 45,000 units currently.JDI and Sharp have been dominating the automotive panel market in Japan and have also captured a relatively high level of market share in the US and Europe, respectively. However, the two firms have also seen their global market shares gradually diminishing as Taiwan-based AU Optronics (AUO) has actively stepped into the markets in Japan and Europe, and some Japan-based automotive electronics companies have reduced their orders to Sharp after Foxconn Electronics took over the management of Sharp.Meanwhile, LG Electronics is also stepping into the automotive electronics market and is offering support to LG Display to make its display subsidiary its main sources of panel supplies. LG Display has begun making inroads into the European market along with its improved technology.Foxconn has its own automotive electronics plants, using panels mainly from its subsidiary Innolux. Sharp has been increasing its purchases of panels from Innolux, further enhancing the supply capacity at Innolux.Although China-based panel makers including BOE Technology, Tianma Micro-electronics and Infovision Optoelectronics are also strengthening their automotive panel business, these firms are currently focusing their marketing on the domestic market.While Samsung Display is switching its focus to AMOLED panels, the AMOLED panels are unlikely to make significant inroads into the automotive panel market before 2020 due to the reliability of such panels.

With autonomous driving becoming a new trend in the IT market, many first-tier IT players including Google and Nvidia have been aggressively expanding their presence in related development. Taiwan's hardware providers have played a key role in the supply chain of the emerging industry.Digitimes recently had a chance to sit down with Jamie Fan, marketing specialist of Taiwan-based industrial PC (IPC) maker Neousys - a hardware supplier for autonomous driving platforms - to talk about the autonomous driving market's status and the company's product development for the market.Q: What is the latest status of the autonomous driving technology development?A: Autonomous driving has been a hot topic in the IT industry for the past few years and car vendors worldwide have also been aggressively investing in related developments.Currently, it is still a long way before we can see all cars feature autonomous driving functionality and drive all by themselves on the road. Most existing autonomous driving systems developed by car vendors are still just driver assistance systems.Before we can reach the final stage of the autonomous driving development, establishing regulations and policies is the major task for governments worldwide and a necessary transition phase for the market despite the fact that the available hardware is already able to support most of the latest technologies.Although many autonomous driving systems already feature self-driving functionality, these systems still require a driver to monitor and make decisions while on the road.Compared to consumer-related applications, we are more optimistic about the adoption of autonomous driving functions in the commercial area. The adoption of the technology from the segment is also expected to be much faster than consumer applications since there are fewer government regulations on commercial machines.We are already seeing broad implementation of autonomous driving technologies in the commercial sector such as industrial trucks and military-use vehicles. Military-use vehicles were one of the earliest adopters of autonomous driving technologies. Since military-use vehicles are often required to conduct missions in dangerous areas, the function is necessary to minimize the number of casualties.Q: What are Neousys' roles in the ecosystem? What are Neousys' advantages in the competition?A: Neousys was originally a supplier of fanless and GPU-accelerated industrial PC (IPC) products. We later crossed into the autonomous driving industry because of our experience in GPU application development.Neousys is a hardware supplier for autonomous driving platforms. All the platforms need to collect large amount of image data to simulate the road conditions. Our high-end GPU-accelerated IPC hardware is able to collect image data from cars' external sensor radars and conduct simple analysis and then send the information to a back-end processing database to share with other devices.We have recently partnered with a first-tier autonomous driving platform developer in China. The developer is looking to form an ecosystem for the market and has been aggressively establishing partnerships with software designers and other IT players.Prior to the cooperation with the China-based platform developer, Neousys also established partnerships with some enterprises in the US and Japan, but not specifically about the autonomous driving products.Because of Neousys' experience in designing fanless IPC products, our products feature better stability than those from competitors. Neousys also has several patented technologies over the hardware design that helps improve heat dissipation of its IPC products' graphics cards dramatically. One of the technologies can separate the heat generated by graphics card and by main machine so the heat does not add up together.Neousys also has a special chassis design that helps minimize the shock the GPU received while driving. Since high-end GPUs are heavily relying on its cooling fans for dissipating heat, the fans could be easily damaged if constantly experiencing vibration.To stay competitive, Neousys continues improving its existing technologies and has also been developing new fanless technologies for its GPU-accelerated IPC portfolio, looking to satisfy clients' demand.Q: How is the competition in the autonomous driving application market? What is Neousys' status in the market?A: Right now, the autonomous driving market is filled with Taiwan's IPC and IT players. Because of its popularity, the competition has been growing fiercer every year. Demand for autonomous driving applications is especially strong in China and many China-based IT players are aggressively investing resources in related application development, looking to grab a share.Because of China's large land mass, we are seeing strong demand coming from many of the country's traditional industries including agriculture. Applications such as manless cultivators have been enjoying strong sales because of their contribution in improving efficiency.The autonomous driving industry is currently still a rather closed market with car vendors all focusing on developing their own systems. To accelerate the development of the autonomous driving market, our China-based platform developing partner is trying to establish a standard so any players are able to use the platform to create autonomous driving products.As for the competition in the upcoming years, the autonomous driving market is expected to be see two groups of players: the closed platform group of mostly car vendors, and the open platform group consisting of such firms as Google. But Neousys still hopes that there will be a universal standard for the autonomous driving applications, which will truly help accelerate the development of the industry.Neousys Nuvo-5095GC IPCPhoto: Company

August 2017 average retail price for 7W LED light bulbs (40W incandescent equivalents) in the China market decreased 6.0% from June 2017 to CNY25.1 (US$3.8), while 9W models (60W incandescent equivalents) increased 0.3% to CNY32.3, according to Digitimes Research.August average prices for 40W- and 60W-equivalent LED bulbs in Japan stood at JPY1,427 (US$13.0) and JPY1,820 respectively, the former growing 0.7% from June and the latter slipping 0.8%, Digitimes Research indicated.August average prices for 40W- and 60W-equivalent LED bulbs in other markets were: KRW7,654 (US$6.9, up 0.8% from June) and KRW12,258 (down 1.8%) in South Korea; US$15.9 (down 7.6%) and US$20.3 (up 6.8%) in the US; EUR4.6 (US$5.5, down 25.8%) and EUR8.8 (up 6.0%) in Europe.Philips 40W-equivalent LED bulbs and Osram 60W-equivalent models available in South Korea had the highest average lumen-price ratios of 134.7lm/US$ and 244.4lm/US$ respectively in August. In terms of luminous efficiency, Mitsubishi Electric 40W-equivalent LED bulbs and 60W-equivalent models in Japan had the highest average level of 95.5lm/W and 108.2lm/W respectively in August.

Allocated for use in short-range high-resolution automotive radar at the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference organized by the International Telecommunication Union, 79GHz (77.5-78.0GHz) frequency band units are expected to gradually replace 24GHz, which is currently widely adopted for automotive millimeter-wave radar sensors, according to Digitimes Research.Currently, 24GHz and 77GHz band units are mostly used in automotive millimeter-wave radar sensors, with 24GHz sensor models detecting ranges of 0.2-30m and mainly used in BSD (blind spot detection) and LDW (lane departure warning). The 77GHz ones are able to detect 100-250m ranges and mainly used in AEB (automatic emergency braking) and ACC (adaptive cruise control), Digitimes Research indicated.Since narrowband 24GHz is relatively inferior in range detection and recognition of objects, and use of ultra wideband 24GHz will expire in 2022, 79GHz will gradually replace 24GHz, and the pace of replacement will accelerate particularly after 2022.In 2017, prices for 24GHz, 77GHz and 79GHz automotive millimeter-wave radar sensor modules are about US$50, US$150-220 and US$100-200 respectively. Based on required safety functions, an ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) should be equipped with at least five millimeter radar sensors: one for detecting long ranges and four for detecting medium and short ranges.Chip manufacturing process for automotive millimeter-wave radar sensors has evolved from GaAs, SiGe to CMOS, with CMOS process featuring integration toward SoC.Since CMOS process can reduce sizes of and production cost for the sensors, prices for such devices are likely to drop to below US$100 in 2022. Global market value for automotive millimeter-wave radar sensors in 2022 is forecast at US$15.96 billion, consisting of US$8.40 billion for short- and mid-range models and US$7.56 billion for long-range ones.

Apple Pay and Android Pay - launched in Japan market in October and December 2016 respectively - are expected to hike consumers' willingness to use mobile e-payment services, as the iPhone has a high share of the smartphone market, and for the latter, HCE (host card emulation)-F software architecture has been adopted for Android devices.Unlike credit cards that use NFC Type A/B for mobile e-payments, providers of handset-based e-wallet services in Japan adopt FeliCa, Sony's contactless RDID card system based on HCE-F technology. FeliCa has dominated mobile e-payment market in Japan, according to Digitimes Research.For the Japan market, Apple has launched FeliCa-enabled iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Apple Watch 2 and cooperated with transportation/credit card issuers Suica, QUICPay and iD to provide Apple Pay services. Based on a smartphone penetration rate of about 70%, a smartphone market share of about 60% for iPhone and an average life cycle of two years for smartphones in Japan in 2016, there are about 10-15 million Apple Pay-supporting iPhones in use in Japan currently.For the Japan market, Google has adopted HCE-F software architecture for Android 7.0 and above smartphone models to enable users to make payments at FeliCa-based devices. The adoption of HCE-F targets not only local consumers but also foreign tourists who use Android smartphones supporting NFC but not FeliCa in Japan, especially those expected to visit Japan during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

There is gradual awareness in the market that augmented reality (AR) glasses do have the potential to replace smartphones, as Microsoft's HoloLens AR glasses inventor Alex Kipman has claimed the smartphone is already dead, and Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash has forecast AR glasses will replace smartphones within the next five years.In terms of functionality, the hardware specifications of AR glasses are much higher than those for smartphones, including higher resolution displays, lenses with 3D sensing capability, and various types of sensors and long endurance batteries. However, the technology bottlenecks for the developments of these hardware products are likely to be removed along with the progress of time, enabling AR glasses not only to have complete features of smartphones but also powerful AR applications, moving them closer to replacing smartphones. However, some breakthroughs still needed to be done for AR glasses as there is a great difference on the application of human-machine interfaces between AR glasses and smartphones.People use touch panels and voice control to operate smartphones within a short distance using an intuitive, direct human-machine communication model.In contrast, existing AR input methods are not straightforward, such as the use of touchpads. Some AR features do not address the privacy issue arising from gesture recognition or voice control.

Premier Lin Chuan, who once served as chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS), and his Cabinet members will resign en masse on September 7, casting uncertainty over the future policies concerning Taiwan's development of AI (artificial intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things), innovation startups and other technologies.Lin has disclosed he tendered his resignation at the end of a national security meeting on September 3 on grounds that he had finished his phased missions. President Tsai Ing-wen has appointed Tainan Mayor William Lai as his succesor, who will take office on September 8.Having served as VIS chairman during 2006-2009, Lin has shown deep understanding of and given high priority to the development of Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics industries. The outgoing premier has identified AI as a key to improving national competitiveness in the next three decades, and has given great support for the Ministry of Science and Technology's (MOST) proposal to build an AI innovation ecosystem in Taiwan. He has instructed the ministry to set up an AI innovation R&D center, and establish robot manufacturing bases in Central Taiwan Science Park and Southern Taiwan Science Park, as well as other related infrastructures.Lin also has stressed that in order to build a complete AI industry, it is highly imperative to cluster existing ICT industries, as well as software and haerdware talent, and how to master diverse AI software programs for different fields and achieve extensive AI applications are also a very crucial task. He has also noted that the government should guide academic and research organizations as well as private enterprises to join the task.As MOST has yet to receive budgets for implementing the AI development strategies, it remains to be seen whether the imcoming premier will endorse and continue Lin's policies. The incoming premier might have his own ideas about AI and other technological development projects, and could adjust related policies and budgets, including those for energy transformation, industrial transformation, AI, IoT, software development, innovation startups, and introducing tech talents from abroad, among others.Taiwan Premier Lin Chuan, center, to step down on September 7. Photo: Shihmin Fu, Digitimes, September 2017

Global demand for large-size public display and digital signage products is set to grow steadily in years to come, fueled by the rise of new human-machine interaction and retail models, as well as by the push to establish smart cities by various governments, according to Digitimes Research.Meanwhile, the rapid development of splicing technology for display products will also work to spur demand for wall display units creating new business opportunities for large-size LCD panels.Global shipments of 32-inch and above public display products are expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% during the period from 2017-2021, with shipments reaching seven million units at the last year of the projected period, according to forecasts by Digitimes Research. AU Optronics (AUO), Samsung Display and LG Display will serve as the top-three suppliers of large-size panels.A large quantity of large-size LCD TV panels will be sold through B2B channels to be used as public display screens by hotels, businesses and retailing applications. Shipments of such large-size B2B panels are likely to reach 4-5 million units by 2021.Overall, flat panel makers are advised to enhance substantially their deployments in the public display market as the traditional PC and TV markets have become mature, while the rise of IoT and big data industries has pinpointed the need to develop new applications.

For the four types of high-speed fixed-line services - FTTH, FTTB+LAN, HFC (hybrid fiber coaxial) and xDSL - currently available in Korea, the number of FTTH service subscribers increased by 46.1% during the period from January 2013 to June 2017. In comparison, those for FTTB+LAN service rose 19.6%, while the subscribers to HFC and xDSL services both actually went down during the same period. Since the FTTH service has been enjoying a higher growth rate, the technology is likely to become mainstream fixed-line broadband service in Korea by 2020, according to Digitimes Research.The number of high-speed fixed line broadband service subscribers in Korea has been growing steadily, expanding from 18.738 million at the end of 2013 to 20.943 million at the end of June 2017. During the period, the FTTB+LAN service saw its subscribers increase from 6.995 million to 8.364 million, while the FTTH had its subscribers grow from 5.107 million to 7.463 million.Fix-line broadband network operators in Korea include top-three telecom operators, Korea Telecom (KT), the SK Group (SK Broadband/SK Telecom) and LG Uplus, and a number of other cable TV operators. Among them, KT accounted for over 40% of the fixed-line subscriber market in the first half of 2017. The SK Group and LG Uplus also recorded steady growths in subscribers during the period, while cable TV operators saw their combined market share in terms of subscribers fell to 15.2% from 16.3% previously.The top-three telecom operators also managed to ramp up total subscribers of their IPTV services to 14.76 million at the end of June 2017 compared to 8.73 million at the end of 2013, largely at the expense of cable TV operators.The top-three telecom operators have been promoting their IPTV services bundled with fixed-line broadband services, resulting in growths for the subscribers to IPTV, FTTH, and FTTB+LAN services, Digitimes research has found.