Samsung Display and LG Display, in view of large potential growth in demand, will continue their expansion of small- to medium-size AMOLED panel production, with combined annual capacity expected to reach 16.069 million square meters in 2020, 3.17 times the 5.067 square meters in 2016, according to Digitimes Research.Samsung Electronics has adopted AMOLED panels for its flagship smartphones, and Apple is expected to launch a 5.8-inch OLED iPhone later in 2017, Digitimes Research indicated. In addition, Samsung Electronics and Apple may adopt OLED panels for tablets.Since flexible AMOLED panels are used in curved-surface smartphones, and the proportion of these smartphones is on the rise, Samsung Display and LG Display are focusing their capacity expansions on small- to medium-size flexible AMOLED panels, with related combined annual production capacity to rise from 2.111 million square meters in 2016 to 11.784 million square meters in 2020.
China's IC design industry output value climbed to US$24.75 billion in 2016 from US$5.66 billion in 2010 which reached a CAGR of 27.9% during the five-year period, according to Digitimes Research.The output value of China's IC design industry is forecast to increase 16.9% on year to US$28.93 billion in 2017, said Digitimes Research.China's continued economic growth and its expanding smartphone market were key drivers of the country's IC design industry output value growth in 2010-2016, Digitimes Research indicated. Despite a slowdown in China's smartphone shipments, the country's steady domestic IC demand and government support for the local industry's development will continue to drive industry output value growth in 2017.In addition, the number of China-based fabless IC firms continues to expand and will exceed 1,500 companies during the period of the country's 13th five-year plan, Digitimes Research said. The number of China-based fabless firms surged 85.1% on year to 1,362 companies in 2016.Taiwan's IC design industry output value grew at a slower CAGR of 5.2% in the period 2010-2016, according to Digitimes Research. The output value of Taiwan's IC design industry came to US$19.09 billion in 2016 from US$14.04 billion in 2010.
Because of rising demand for cloud computing, shipments of server and rack products have increased, and revenues at Taiwan's server motherboard, storage and network equipment players grew 4.8% on year to reach around NT$559 billion (US$18.38 billion) in 2016, and will grow another 5.9% on year in 2017.Worldwide server shipments grew 5.1% on year to reach around 11.5 million units (based on the number of motherboards) in 2016 and are expected to grow 3.7% on year to reach nearly 12 million units in 2017. Cloud computing server shipments will continue enjoying growth, while shipments from traditional server brand vendors will suffer from declines. Since servers using Intel's next-generation Purley platform will enter mass shipments in 2018-2019, worldwide server shipments are estimated to grow over 7% on year in 2018, according to Digitimes Research's figures.Server shipments from Taiwan grew 4.9% on year in 2016, surpassing 10 million units and will continue to grow another 4-5% in 2017. Wistron's shipments including the volume from Wiwynn are also expected to surpass those of Inventec to become the largest player in Taiwan in 2017.
LCD panel shipments for digital signage will reach 4.4 million units globally in 2017, increasing 8.6% on year, and the shipments will keep growing to 5.8 million units in 2020, according to Digitimes Research.While SMD (surface mount device) RGB LED technology has improved resolution of LED display panels used in digital signage, LCD panels are still superior in resolution, Digitimes Research indicated.A large LCD public display still has to be formed by several screens, but slim bezel designs and improved imaging technology will enable LCD to remain mainstream in the market.Development of digital signage is moving toward integration with IoT (Internet of Things), cloud computing and Big Data analytics to collect and analyze data for commercial use.
8K-resolution display technology is being developed for medical application in Japan, with typical cases being use in endoscopic surgery by National Cancer Center Hospital and in remote medical diagnosis developed by NTT Data which is a global IT innovator, according to Digitimes Research.While 8K is a resolution level beyond human eyes' discriminating capability, the technology carries importance for medical application, Digitimes Research indicated. Although 8K LCD TVs are still too expensive to become popular in the Japan market, high cost for 8K-resolution display technology is acceptable for medical application and thus the public and private sectors in Japan have been boosting such application.So far in Japan, 8K-resolution display technology has been used in medical monitoring, endoscopy, educational display of surgical operations and remote medical diagnosis. In particular, the technology is mostly used to develop endoscopic systems. In addition, 8K-resolution images can be combined with AI (artificial intelligence) analysis for further application to medical care.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have been developed in a direction of featuring autonomous driving solutions that can take control to enhance road safety, instead of simply acting as a warning system to assist drivers.With ADAS growing to become a new promotion point for car vendors and many countries having started to enact related policies, ADAS may become the newest must-have car safety feature after anti-lock braking systems (ABS) and airbags, according to Digitimes Research's new report on car technology.
China has strong demand for robots, but locally produced robots took up only 26.7% of its demand in 2015. Too meet the demand, China firms have geared up development of robots with government incentives in recent years and the use of robots has extended from manufacturing to other sectors. But the development of China's robot industry faces two risks: over investment in low-end robots with low added values, and consequently oversupply, according to Digitimes Research.The "Made in China 2025" initiative revealed by the government in May 2015 include robot industry in strategic industrial development, Digitimes Research indicated. Then, China's Ministry of Information Technology and Industry in July 2016 unveiled a plan for developing the robot industry which specifies 10 main types of robots and five key components as targets of development.Since Japan- and Europe-based makers have dominated the development and supply of key components, many China-based robot makers focus on secondary development of robotic systems, customized components and after-sale services.Siasun Robot & Automation, Effort Intelligent Equipment and GSK CNC Equipment are major China-based robot makers. Siasun has extended development and production to service robots used in home care, education and entertainment, while Shanghai PartnerX Robotics and Ubtech Robotics specialize in service robots.
The Japan government relaxed regulations on unlocking SIM of handsets in early 2017 and consequently MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) business has been in booming development in the Japan mobile communication market, with several MVNOs expanding retail networks and offering more services to attract subscribers, according to Digitimes Research.The new regulations shorten the time taken to unlock SIM cards, which is helpful for portability of mobile phone numbers and facilitates mobile communication subscribers to shift from mobile telecom carriers to MVNOs, Digitimes Research indicated.According to Japan-based MM Research Institute, there were 55.62 million MVNO subscribers in Japan in September 2016, increasing 52.7% on year. Availability of inexpensive SIM cards (not locked with handsets) for sale or rent also pushes growth in MVNO subscription. According to Japan-based Seed Planning, there were 8.4 million users of such SIM cards in 2016 and the number will increase to 10.8 million in 2017, with Rakuten Mobile being the largest provider of such SIM cards.More than 90% of MVNOs use NTT DoCoMo's mobile communication networks on lease mainly because rental rates are lower than those offered by SoftBank and KDDI au. While MVNOs compete with mobile telecom carriers, the latter have rental revenues from leased infrastructure increasing along with growth in MVNO user base.
Artificial intelligence (AI) based on deep neural network (DNN) architecture has been widely used in image recognition and has large potential in autonomous driving, according to Digitimes Research.At the Consumer Electronics Show 2017 in early January, Nvidia unveiled Xavier, a SoC equipped with 8-core ARM processor and GPU based on Nvidia's next-generation graphics architecture Volta, specifically for use in automotive machine learning systems, Digitimes Research indicated. Israel-based Mobileye NV and STMicroelectronics have been jointly developing EyeQ5, an image-recognizing SoC for use in self-driving.Other image-recognizing chip solutions are based on IP core or FPGAs. For example, Cadence Design System, Synopsis and CEVA have offered IP core-based products.Due to complicated road conditions, self-driving entails various sensors to detect different conditions. DNN-based AI can precisely detect and classify conditions surrounding moving vehicles and combine various sensor data.
At Mobile World Congress 2017, three tends of wireless networking/communication development were revealed: Commercial operation of pre-5G networks will begin ahead of the original schedule; mobile telecom carriers are driven to change their roles to cope with fast IoT growth; 5G networks will be extensive through daily life, according to Digitimes Research.Pre-5G prototype devices were showcased at MWC 2016, and end-to-end solutions based on pre-5G technology were exhibited at MWC 2017, meaning that pre-5G technology is out of the laboratory, Digitimes Research indicated.Pre-5G communication technologies, including millimeter wave, MIMO/MU-MIMO, beam tracking, are expected to enter small-scale commercial operations in 2018.In addition to developing network slicing architecture, mobile telecom carriers have begun to develop LPWAN (low-power wide area network) services on unlicensed frequency bands for IoT.
