Statistics from US-based research body CB Insights show that non-US unicorn startups commanded a 50% share of total global unicorns as of the end of August 2017, sharply up from only 37% as of the end of 2014, indicating the US is no longer a dominant country in nurturing startups. It also suggests that against Asian enterprises, particularly those in China, unrelentingly pursuing development and growth, the Silicon Valley seems stuck in the status quo.Among Asian countries, China now takes the lead with 56 unicorns and India comes next with 10, with both countries being top targets for multinational investment funds. Korea ranks third with three unicorns, and Singapore and Indonesia have two each; but those unicorns in the two Southeast Asian countries all involve financial support from China tech giants.China's web population broke the 700 million mark to hit 731 million as of the end of 2016 after experiencing an annual growth of 6.2%, according to statistics released by the China Internet Network Information Center. The growth, however, has fallen under 10% for the first time in five years, indicating China's web population growth has entered a plateau period.Creating new miracles in new sectorsDespite the relatively stable web population, it will be increasingly difficult to create unicorn companies in the future. But in the emerging sectors such as Internet of Vehicles (IoV), FinTech and related services, China still stands a chance of creating new miracles, given the fact that in 2016 alone, the user numbers of ride-hailing services shot up 38% on year to 168 million in the country.Eyeing huge business opportunities associated with Internet investment, Beijing authorities officially launched the China Internet Investment Fund at a scale of CNY100 billion (US$15.14 billion) in late January 2017, with China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom all among strategic fund providers. China has become the world's largest e-commerce market, with its trading scale estimated by iResearch to hit CNY400 trillion by 2020. But, beyond capturing the huge business opportunities in the domestic market, China Internet investment funds and venture capital funds will surely extend their tentacles to emerging markets surrounding the Indian Ocean by taking advantage of their powerful financial resources and abundant experiences.China to be world's No. 1 venture fund source in two yearsAt the moment, one fourth of global venture capitals come from Silicon Valley. But as China contributed US$72 billion or 21.4% of total global venture capital funds in 2016, the country is expected to unseat the US as the world's largest source of such funds within two years. In fact, China tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu have been actively injecting funds to support startups, with Tencent, particularly, having invested in 19 unicorns, surpassing the corresponding figure of 13 recorded by Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley.In May 2016, Google and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings jointly published a report on the digital economy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), showing that total digital economy investments by the ASEAN member states already amounted to over US$200 billion. And startups in the ASEAN garnered financings of US$3.1 billion in 2016 and absorbed much more new funds of nearly US$5 billion in the first seven months of 2017. Among them, the Singapore-based ride-hailing platform operator Grab has absorbed US$3.44 billion in financing, and the Indonesian motorbike on-demand startup Go-Jek has obtained US$1.75 billion in funds, with both firms already on the name list of global unicorns. Who are the major fund providers behind ASEAN startups? Besides Japan's SoftBank, China's four Internet giants BATJ (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com) have contributed the most of the funds for those startups. Among them, Alibaba and Tencent are the most aggressive, with Alibaba having almost completed Alipay service deployments in main ASEAN member countries via investments by its financial service platform Ant Financial.Alibaba, Tencent aggressively expanding presence in ASEANTaiwan's New Southbound Policy - which aims at bettering trade ties with ASEAN and South India - still highlights the concept of hardware production. It seems that while Taiwan is still warming up for the race, Alibaba and Tencent are already miles ahead. As the main investor in Singapore's e-commerce platform Lazada, Alibaba has twice injected funds into the company, whose market value has now reached US$3.15 billion. In the ASEAN countries, Alibaba has demonstrated its determination to integrate and consolidate local payment flows by rendering Alipay services through its subsidiary Ant Financial.In fact, Taiwan's startups are not far away from the global stage, but they tend to confine themselves to only a small scale when soliciting venture capital funds. In facing the development of startups involving high risks and high investment returns, Taiwan has two questions to answer: Should the funnel's opening be widened to allow all nationals to join startups or let selected elites do the job? Should the country develop B2C startups or cultivate many mini-unicorns in the B2B or focus markets?(The comments are from a Chinese-language book "Borrowing East Wind: China-US Tech Wrestling and Taiwan" written by Colley Hwang, president of Digitimes.)

Aurotek, founded in 1981, was one of the earliest automation equipment component suppliers in Taiwan. The company started the business as a distribution agent of mechanical equipment components such as bearings, ball screws, and universal joints from Japan, according to Aurotek's special assistance to chairman Nelson Chang.As the company grew in years, it assigned an R&D team mainly for the integration of all the related components and supply of complete solutions to Taiwan's equipment manufacturers. Moreover, the team also began offering fine-tuning services to its clients for their equipment, Chang said.The expansion of the R&D team helped the company step into the brand automated equipment field and supply Aurotek-branded machines directly to the manufacturers. However, to avoid competing directly with its clients, Aurotek's OBM products are mainly targeting the segments where its OEM/ODM clients do not have a presence.In addition to automation equipment products, Aurotek is also a developer of structure safety devices for buildings, selling products such as isolation and damping devices for minimizing earthquake damage, smoke extraction devices, and energy-saving blinds.Other than that, Aurotek is also a supplier of PCB depaneling systems, optical communication systems and mechanical arms.As the automation industry continues seeing significant growth, Aurotek has started to devote more efforts managing the variety of products it distributes. Among Aurotek's automation equipment distribution business, 70% of the products are from Japan-based machine equipment brand vendors and the remaining 30% from US- or Europe-based ones. The increasing demand in the market also benefits the sale performances of its own-brand products, Chang stated.To maintain the company's competitiveness and introduce more innovations, Aurotek has been partnering with Taiwan's state-owned research institutes such as Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to jointly work on technology development projects for automation applications, Chang pointed out.Nowadays, China is the largest automation market in Asia and a majority of Aurotek's shipments go to the country. Although Aurotek also obtains orders from Taiwan, the volumes are much smaller. With the China government's aggressive push of its Made in China 2025 project and 13th Five-year Plan, the worldwide automation and robotic industry is expected to see increasing pressure from the China competition.Aurotek's sales in China ramped up during the past 2-3 years thanks to its early channels development and solid partnership with clients and will continue pushing it efforts to keep up its performance in the market, Chang said.Although the competition in the automation industry is getting keener than before, Aurotek is confident it will be able to play a major role in the industry. Aurotek is seeing a lot of business opportunities from many different automation applications. Aurotek's advantage in customization thanks to its years of experience is continuing to strengthen the company's competitiveness in the automation market, he said. Aurotek is capable of providing comprehensive customization services for its automation products to its clients with the assistance from the R&D team, Chang added.Aurotek's special assistance to chairman Nelson Chang.Photo: Company

The concept of a fully "connected home" has been discussed for more than 20 years. However, widespread proliferation has taken far longer than anyone could have originally imagined. For a long time, deployment activity seemed to be limited to a relatively small number of high value installations. These installations were generally complicated to implement and their operation was not very user-friendly. Most importantly, they were composed of an amalgamation of isolated subsystems from different suppliers rather than a single universal system.Even as home automation started to become accessible from smartphones and tablets, market fragmentation meant that each aspect of the automation technology installed within a home was still based on its own proprietary mechanism that needed a separate app to control it. As a result, home automation systems have often proven inconvenient and frustrating for those operating them and has unquestionably held back their adoption by consumers. The industry fragmentation and lack of interoperability between different vendor ecosystems meant that the consumer couldn't really take advantage of the connected capabilities of all the various platforms.The industry is innovating with solutions that seem finally likely to help broaden the appeal of home automation and accelerate its future progression. Through its HomeKit technology, Apple is looking to consolidate all the various verticals under a single, comprehensive home automation ecosystem that works together easily and securely. The HomeKit Accessory Protocol (HAP) is enabling hardware from different suppliers involved in home automation to communicate with Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) via a single, consistent, complete platform. This is done via wireless technologies like Bluetooth Low Energy technology, as well as IP connectivity. The list of different "behaviors" covered by the HomeKit hardware and software technology is extensive. Selecting a playlist for the audio system, turning on the lights in a particular room, remotely starting up home appliances (such as a washer/dryer), adjusting the heating and cooling, and activating the door entry system are just a few examples. But, because all of these functions are controlled via the Apple Home app or by asking Siri (rather than multiple apps), they can now work in tandem. For instance, settings can be configured so that if the curtains in a room were drawn, then the lighting would simultaneously turn on, or the ambient lighting could be changed to fit a certain music playlist.Marvell is placing itself at the forefront of next generation smart home development through its support of Apple HomeKit. Our family of wireless SoC devices was the first in the industry to secure certification for the original HAP specification three years ago and has consistently been at the forefront as evidenced with our latest HomeKit Accessory Protocol Release 9 (HAP R9) specification. The low power 88MW30x ICs each possess an integrated microcontroller with Cortex-M4 processing core, plus single-band IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi functionality. The truly transformational change this time is our SoCs' certification for iCloud implementation, which enables remote control of HomeKit compliant devices using voice as well as the HomeKit App using iCloud remote access. This means that OEMs serving the home automation market will be able to make their systems much more streamlined and convenient to seamlessly implement through iCloud. As a result, new use cases are now possible. For example, you can remotely start your thermostat to heat or cool your home using the Apple Home app (or Siri voice control) while you are still on your way home from work and have the right temperature set for when you arrive.This technology is showcased in the Marvell EZ-Connect HAP software development kit (SDK), which is designed to facilitate the implementation of HomeKit-enabled home automation accessories - accelerating our OEM customers' design cycles and allowing products to be brought to market more quickly. Complementing its 802.11n wireless connectivity, the incorporated bridging functionality also allows interfacing with equipment using other RF protocols like Bluetooth low energy technology. For example, Marvell has partnered with a leading Bluetooth low energy vendor to offer a combo module reference design that is commercially available today through one of our module vendor partners, Azurewave. Our emphasis on security, encryption and memory partitioning allows secure, over-the-air firmware upgrades so that customer applications can run securely from external Flash memory while being encrypted on the fly. Our SDK also supports Amazon's popular AWS cloud platform and Google's Weave/Cloud as alternatives. To accompany the SDK, Marvell intends to provide OEMs with all the collateral necessary to get their products through the HomeKit certification process as rapidly and painlessly as possible and into the market quickly. Useful project examples are also provided.Marvell understands how crucially important a robust software solution is to enable a hassle free home automation user experience and has developed industry leading software capabilities in support of Apple HomeKit. This has allowed us to get ahead of the game.

Shipments of smartphone-use application processors in China are expected to reach 179 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 4.1% on quarter and 1.4% on year, according to estimates of Digitimes Research.MediaTek's shipments of smartphone APs are gaining a boost in the fourth quarter, fueled by the promotion of its Helio P23 and P30 SoCs, both of which meet China Mobile's Cat. 7 specifications and feature a vision processing unit (VPU) supporting AI applications. As a result, MediaTek is expected to narrow its shipment gap against Qualcomm to 4.1pp in the fourth quarter, Digitimes Research estimates.Qualcomm managed to maintain its leading market position in China's smartphone AP market in the second and third quarters of 2017, buoyed by booming smartphone sales enjoyed by Xiaomi Technology, which bought a large portion of its APs from Qualcomm. However, Qualcomm will face price competition in the fourth quarter as it will be unable to continue to dominate the Cat.7 and above market segments.Overall, smartphone AP shipments in the China market expanded 24.3% sequentially to 172 million units in the third quarter of 2017 due largely to replenishment demand from brand smartphone vendors with Qualcomm being the top beneficiary.Smartphone AP shipments from Spreadtrum Communications and MediaTek were affected somewhat in the third quarter due to decreased smartphone shipments by white-box handset vendors, affected by rising prices for components (such as memory chips) and decreased overseas orders.

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is being fast developed based on two standards of wireless communication technology, DSRC (dedicated short range communications) and C-V2X (cellular vehicle-to-everything) developed by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).In terms of IoV development, the US has taken the lead, Digitimes Research indicated. The US Department of Transportation in 2015 planned to adopt a regulation requiring all new vehicles be equipped with DSRC-based V2V (vehicle to vehicle) devices beginning 2020, rendering DSRC applicable to V2V.Qualcomm in September 2017 unveiled MDM 9150 C-V2X chip in a bid to set up a C-V2X ecosystem, and has won support from several automakers including Audi, Continental, Ford and PSA Group. MDM 9150 uses unlicensed 5.9GHz ITS (intelligent transportation systems) frequency band units.IoV using onboard millimeter wave radars and cameras to collect data on cars' surrounding can provide V2V function of keeping safe distances between cars; V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) function of displaying traffic lights for controlling running speeds; and V2P (vehicle to pedestrian) function of keeping pedestrians safe. These functions entail software-based processing and analysis of spatial data, bringing business opportunities for setting up high-precision digital map databases.

Demand for upgrading hospitals to smart facilities is increasing fast in China where hospitals are in short supply and medical resources are unevenly distributed.There are about 33,000 hospitals of varying sizes around China and 80% of them are in larger cities, Digitimes Research indicated. While private and government-run hospitals account for 56% and 44% of all hospitals at present, the number of private hospitals will be increasing faster from about 19,000 in 2017 to 46,000 in 2021.In China, the smart solution supply chain generally lack an understanding of hospital operations, but local suppliers have an upper hand over foreign competitors in some fields such as hospital information system and operation-supporting system.Taiwan-based suppliers will have advantages through combining innovative technologies such as robots and AI (artificial intelligence) with hospital management.

Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow 5% on year to reach 1.43 billion units in 2017 and expand another 4.8% to over 1.5 billion units in 2018, according to Digitimes Research.Replacement demand for smartphones from feature phone users in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South America and Africa will be the main source of sales growth for smartphones from 2018-2022 with shipments to grow at a rate of 60-70 million units a year during the projected period.With the exception of Apple and HMD Global (Nokia), the rest of the world's top-20 handset brands in 2017 will come from Asia, including 11 from China and two each from Korea, India and Taiwan. China-based Huawei, Oppo and Vivo will take the third, fourth and fifth positions in the global vendors ranking in 2017.

Seeing all-screen smartphones continue eroding tablet demand, tablet vendors, to differentiate the two product lines, are turning aggressively to promote 10-inch and above models with consumer-friendly prices, hoping to trigger a replacement trend. Digitimes Research expects worldwide tablet shipments to reach 128 million units in 2018 with on-year decline shrinking to around 10%.Digitimes Research expects all-screen smartphone's impact on tablet demand to weaken after 2019 and worldwide tablet shipments will remain at above 120 million units each year with a CAGR of negative 1.4% from 2018-2022.Apple, Samsung Electronics and Amazon will be the top-3 tablet vendors worldwide in 2017, while Huawei will move to fourth place, surpassing Lenovo thanks to a strategy to push product differentiation. The gap between Huawei and Lenovo gap is expected to further extend in 2018.With some vendors already adopting over 6-inch displays for their all-screen smartphones, shipments of 7.x- to 8.x-inch tablets will see increasing competition. To minimize the impact, Digitimes Research believes, tablet brands will turn to focus on promoting their 9-inch and above models, causing worldwide shipments of 9-inch and above tablets to account for over 60% of worldwide volumes in 2018.Although China-based makers together have seen increased share of worldwide 8-inch tablet shipments, their rapidly dropping 7-inch orders will benefit Taiwan's share of worldwide shipments, boosting the percentage to above 50% in 2018 as most large-size tablets will be delivered by Taiwan makers.

The top-three high speed fixed network communications firms in South Korea have adopted different marketing strategies to attract customer patronages, with the leading player Korea Telecom (KT) offering better broadband connection quality and a more complete array of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) channels, according to Digitimes Research.Against KT having the largest user numbers for both high speed fixed network communications and IPTV services, SK Broadband (SKB) is trying hard to solicit more customers with prices lower than offered by KT and highlighting the full-HD feature of all its channels, while LG U+ is actively attracting the group of viewers with less viewing time and budget by offering the lowest prices and fewer channels, Digitimes Research report showed.In terms of high speed fixed-network communications services, the three operators mainly provide three connection speeds of services - 100Mbps, 500Mbps and 1Gbps - and they render basic, advanced and high levels of IPTV services in accordance with the numbers of available channels. Of the three firms, KT collects the highest charges for the three connection speeds of services, SKB and LG U+ offer lower service rates for the 100Mbps services, but their service charges for 500Mbps and 1Gbps segments are not remarkably lower than KT's.As far as the number of IPTV channels is concerned, KT offers 215 channels for basic-level services, 225 channels for advanced-level services, and 246 for high-level services, compared with the 130-215 number range provided by SKB and 84-172 by LG U+. Monthly charges taken by KT are higher than those required by the other two rivals for offering a more comprehensive network of IPTV channels.SKB's monthly charges for three levels of IPTV services are lower than KT and higher than LG U+, but its channels are all full-HD ones, including more UHD (ultra high definition) channels than those available at KT and LG U+, indicating the company showing greater regard for higher definition.Offering fewer channels, LG U+ demands lower charges for all the three levels of IPTV services than the other two players, seeking to attract specified consumer groups.

There is large potential demand for OTA (over the air) upgrading of firmware/software for in-car electronic devices because car owners need not drive to maintenance shops merely for such upgrading, according to Digitimes Research.Automotive OTA upgrade is just burgeoning, for only 10% of automakers worldwide have had cars equipped with OTA upgrade functions, Digitimes Research indicated. This is because, unlike OTA upgrade for smartphones, tablets and PCs, hardware and software architectures as well as software codes used in cars are complicated and so is automotive OTA upgrade.Currently, automotive OTA upgrade is mostly for upgrading TCU (telematics control unit), IVI (in-vehicle infortainment), ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) and power transmission systems. Tesla has led in automotive OTA upgrade.While smartphone-use service providers are interested in stepping into automotive OTA upgrade, OTA upgrade for cars is highly complicated. For example, there may be more than 100 models of electronic control units, and the hardware/software architectures and software codes may vary from model to model.To address the complexity, automotive OTA upgrade providers have come up with solutions, including automotive electronic devices in conformity to architectures that enable automatic OTA upgrade, shortening OTA upgrade files and/or time, encrypting and differentiating OTA upgrade for information security, categorizing software at servers first and then delivering data corresponding to OTA to cars for upgrade.