Taiwan-based makers shipped 21.051 million LCD monitors in third-quarter 2017, increasing 5.1% sequentially and 1.0% on year to take up 67.0% of the global total. The shipment value totaled US$2.313 billion, up 2.4% sequentially and 8.8% on year, according to Digitimes Research.Of the Taiwan makers' third-quarter shipments, 22-inch and above models accounted for 52.5%; and 18-inch to below 22-inch 43.8%, Digitimes Research indicated.TPV Technology was the largest maker accounting for over 50% of the shipments, followed by Qisda, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai) and Wistron.Global shipments from all makers in 2017 are projected at 120.025 million units, slipping 3.4% on year, and will keep dropping at 2.2% CAGR during 2017-2022.

Global shipments of notebooks (excluding detachable 2-in-1 models) declined 4.2% on year to 40.79 million units in the third quarter of 2017 as weakening demand in the consumer sector and a corporate reorganization at Asustek Computer offset gains resulting from better-than-expected Chromebook sales and brisk sales of gaming models in China, according to Digitimes Research.Notebook shipments are expected to see a boost in the fourth quarter as it is traditionally a peak season, fueled by year-end holiday sales and Double Eleven online shopping day in China. Google is gearing up efforts to promote Chromebooks in the consumer market, and Microsoft and other brands are promoting notebook sales, including leasing, in the business sector.Global notebook shipments are expected to reach 41.72 million units in the fourth quarter, up 2.3% on quarter and 0.5% from a year earlier, Digitimes Research estimates. The slow pace of the shipment growth for the fourth quarter indicates that the current rebound in the notebook market is coming to an end.For individual brands, HP will maintain its leading market position and see its shipments reach a new high in the fourth quarter, powered by brisk sales both in the consumer and business sectors. Lenovo will rank second as its shipments will resume momentum following the completion of its recent management reshuffle.Dell will take third position as the vendor currently ships over 60% of its products to the business segment, where the sector growth is lower than that for the consumer market. Apple alone will see its shipments decline in the fourth quarter due to the absence of new models and the squeeze effects caused by the availability of iPhone X.Asustek Computer will see shipments rebound in the fourth quarter, outracing Acer to capture fifth position. Xiaomi Technology has been performing steadily and will outperform Japan-based vendors to become number nine.Among Taiwan-based ODMs, Compal Electronics and Pegatron will perform relatively strong in the fourth quarter. Compal's fourth-quarter shipments are likely to grow 30% sequentially, buoyed by increasing orders from Acer and HP. Meanwhile, Pegatron will manage to lower its shipment gap against Wistron thanks to increasing orders from brand clients.

The development of on-device edge computing technology is heating up as related makers are seeking technology breakthroughs to address the concerns of privacy and protection of sensitive date when applying deep learning under cloud applications and to lower costs for enterprises to adjust its internal IT infrastructure to cope with cloud environments; or to challenge the restrictions caused by latency, Internet bandwidth limits and insufficient network infrastructure for development of smart applications such as computer vision (CV) and self-driving automobiles.In consideration of power consumption and performance, deep learning attached to end devices currently focuses on inference, which is normally done by embedding a training model in the form of chip into terminal-end devices. However, Google has been implementing its Federated Learning as a decentralized data training architecture, so that terminal devices will be no longer working mainly on deep learning inference.Federated Learning also allows end devices to perform small-scale data training reducing bandwidth demand and the burden of cloud servers, while protecting privacy and sensitive data. It also helps improve the efficiency and speed of the circulation from training to inference, and therefore enhancing edge computing.While Qualcomm has rolled out its neural process engine (NPE) to enable AI on smartphones via heterogeneous computing, the incorporation of AI chips into system on chip (SoC) products has become a prevailing trend. The introduction of integrated AI chips on application processors by Apple and Huawei will encourage other chipmakers including Qualcomm and MediaTek to follow suit, Digitimes Research believes.Meanwhile, a number of IP providers including Synopsys, CEVA, Cadence, Verisilicon all have come out with DSP (digital signal processor)-based embedded solutions, which some of them are made of a 16nm process, for the CV market, where they will meet competition from Intel and Nvidia, especially after Intel has acquired Mobileye and Movidius to cross into autonomous driving and image recognition sectors.

Japan-based Nichia recorded the highest revenues among all main LED packaging service providers worldwide in first-half 2017, with sales reaching JPY132.79 billion (US$1.142 billion), up 4.9% on year, according to Digitimes Research.Germany-based Osram Opto Semiconductors ranked second with US$463.5 million, up 11.1% on year. Third-place Korea-based Seoul Semiconductor had US$442.1 million, up 12.1%, followed by Taiwan's Everlight Electronics with US$427.7 million, down 2.8%.The other major players' revenues for the period were: China-based MLS, US$415.6 million, up 66.3%; Korea-based LG Innotek, US$291.0 million, down 4.1%; US-based Cree, 274.7 million, down 11.2%; China-based Foshan Nationstar Optoelectronics, US$202.7 million, up 50.0%; Taiwan's Lextar Electronics, US$192.7 million, down 11.7%; and China's Hongli Zhihui, US$169.1 million, up 65.4%.The China-based makers' significant revenue growths were driven by major production capacity expansions.

Developments of the optical lens industry have always been in close connection with those in end application markets, advancing from digital cameras and projectors in the early years to smartphones in recent years. Taiwan has formed a complete industry cluster supplying upstream blank glass, midstream lenses and downstream camera modules. With dual cameras and 3D sensing in smartphones becoming the trend in addition to burgeoning applications such as automotive cameras, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robot vision and drones, the optical lens industry is looking forward to a bright future.Envisioning booming opportunities, optical lens producers are all looking to increase production capacity. As they tend to develop their own production equipment through independent research by their automation teams for protection of their trade secret, rather than purchasing equipment from suppliers, to increase capacity, they need to think of ways to enhance the equipment's ability to respond to quick production line changes and fully satisfy precision control requirements. Camera modules have diverse configurations and require precise assembly work. Without careful calculations on the positions and bonding angles between lenses, there may be optical axis misalignment resulting in blurry images and poor picture quality.Synchronous action across control cards is key to boosting production capacityUnder the circumstances, optical lens producers face the same challenge of how to implement synchronous motion control on the production line to achieve high-performance and high-precision control. Most manufacturers are used to satisfying their production needs by expanding motion control cards. The increase in the number of motion control cards means there are more axes that need to be controlled. Therefore, synchronous action across axes (cards) holds the key to increasing capacity, which is unlikely to happen due to limitation of the traditional architecture.Furthermore, with a limited number of I/O slots, industrial computers can hardly support continuing motion control card expansions. As a result, vendors have no choice but to keep buying more industrial computers, which imposes burden in terms of both costs and space. This is another challenge for the optical lens industry.Chia-Wei Yang, market development manager, automation business center, ADLINK, commented optical lens producers are phasing in EtherCAT solutions to overcome the above-mentioned challenges and enhance production flexibility. They hope to use "out-of-box" control and connect all EtherCAT masters and slaves with the same Ethernet cable so different axes under the control of different motion control cards have a chance to move in synchronization. Moreover, with the same Ethernet cable, optical lens producers can add new slave equipment at any time to address the needs for capacity expansion. Taking ADLINK's EtherCAT solution for example, up to 64 axes can operate in synchronization and the availability of 10,000 DI/O and 2,500 AI/O allows ample expandability.Using machine vision to guarantee reliable defect inspectionSome users may wonder that although capacity increase relies on hardware expansion, software changes are also required. This is ADLINK's strength, creating customer trust. ADLINK provides APS Function Library so customers can reuse existing software packages while also customizing some functions available from APS, such as redefining speed and loop and helical interpolation to accelerate software packaging or enrich software features. On the APS basis, customers can easily and flexibly keep up with evolving operation needs whether by expanding control cards or modifying software programs.Yang pointed out ADLINK is able to come out ahead in optical lens producers' selection process because its solution not only provides excellent compatibility with third-party EtherCAT equipment (e.g. motors) but also enables a greater advantage by integrating machine vision. After a work piece enters the assembly line, a typical production flow includes the steps of alignment, processing, compiling production history and finally defect inspection. Machine vision is used for inspection during the whole process, including simple alignment check and complicated AOI defect check. ADLINK has accumulated 16 years of experience in machine vision technologies and offers complete products including capture cards and compact vision systems which have passed meticulous testing to guarantee compatibility with ADLINK Talos EtherCAT master controllers and a high level of integration.It should also be mentioned that in-house optical production lines undergo constant changes to accommodate diverse production tasks for different devices. Vendors generally desire equipment with smaller footprint to save space as well as wiring costs. Seeing that industrial computers are generally too bulky, ADLINK especially introduces the new Talos-2000 controller featuring compact footprint, highly integrated machine vision and compatibility with third-party EtherCAT equipment. Many optical lens producers are enthusiastically embracing Talos-2000 as it enables precise motion control through highly synchronized actions, supports optimal flexibility and adapts to quick production line changes.ADLINK stays on top of customer to keep improving product usability and thereby develops new functions in the APS Function Library for customers to make use of. It will soon add a new function to support flexible editing of EtherCAT slave stations. If customers need to change their EtherCAT topology and correspondingly modify the software programs in the future, they can do so at the slave stations without any problem.Please visit ADLINK for more information.ADLINK hopes to use "out-of-box" control and connect all EtherCAT masters and slaves with the same Ethernet cable so different axes under the control of different motion control cards have a chance to move in synchronization.

With regard to the development of smartphone-use panels, Taiwan's top-three TFT LCD panel makers all have been focusing on all-screen displays with an 18:9 aspect ratio recently. The new 6G LTPS fabs of AU Optronics (AUO) and Innolux in Taiwan have entered volume production recently, and a new 6G line of Chunghua Picture Tubes (CPT) in China is expected to come online shortly. CPT's 6G line also plans to develop IGZO panels later.In terms of technology development, Taiwan's major flat panel players are eyeing flexible panels, with AUO being able to roll out prototypes of 4mm radius curved displays enabling to be flexed continuously for over one million times.The development of 18:9 handset-use panels comes as smartphone clients are shifting to focus on all-screen models. The current mainstream all-screen panels rolled out by Taiwan makers include 5.7- and 5.99-inch sizes, which are the extended 18:9 versions of traditional 5.2- and 5.5-inch 16:9 panels. Meanwhile, the all-screen panels are available mainly in FHD+ (2,160 by 1,080 pixels) and HD+ (1,440 by 720 pixels) resolutions.Both AUO and Innolux have been focusing on producing FHD+ all-screen panels from their 6G LTPS lines, while CPT is rolling out HD+ 18:9 panels using a-Si TFT LCD process.While the adoption of polyimide (PI) substrates has also become a mainstream for the development of flexible display technology, major players have also continued their efforts to advance their thin-film packaging technology to enhance the bendability and practicality of their flexible panels.

Linde LienHwa, a joint venture between the Germany-based Linde Group and Taiwan-based LienHwa Industrial, is a manufacturer of bulk and electronic specialty gases used during the manufacturing of semiconductors, displays, solar panels, LEDs and others.The company has been operating in Taiwan's gas manufacturing and supply industry for over 30 years and has already grown to become a major gas supplier for many electronics players in both Taiwan and China.In September 2017, Linde LienHwa announced investments in production of electronic special gases at two Taiwan facilities - octafluorobutane (C4F8) purification and filling facility in Taichung, and hexachlorodisilane (HCDS) transfill facility in Taoyuan - to enhance its portfolio to meet growing demand from its Taiwan-based and international clients.Linde LienHwa currently has capacity of over 100 tons of C4F8 per year for use in advanced semiconductor etching processes as well as cleaning production chambers in predominantly older-sized semiconductor tools.Since the transfill process involves repackaging material into specialized stainless steel vessels while improving the purity and validating the quality, Linde LienHwa's investment in transfilling facility for HCDS is sized to serve both Taiwan and customers throughout Asia. HCDS is used for depositing silicon compounds at very low process temperatures, which is important for making nanoscale electrical insulators in memory and logic processor chips.During an interview by Digitimes, Linde Electronics' head of Global Electronics Andreas Weisheit and head of Market Development Paul Stockman pointed out that the company is currently operating in many different value channels. It makes many of the materials in-house. For some materials, the company purchases them from outside suppliers and purifies them for its clients. It also sources some materials from third-party players and conducts analysis and repackaging-into-container services for semiconductor and electronics clients.The company has three modes of delivery. Most of its products are produced, purified, and packaged off-site into various sized containers. These range from small-sized gas lecture bottles, to larger gas cylinders, to tube and ISO containers the length of a shipping container. The materials for the containers are primarily made from stainless steel or aluminum, but can use specialized materials like nickel and alloys to contain more reactive chemicals.Some of its products are used in such high volumes that its customers use bulk storage tanks located on their sites instead. Linde LienHwa produces these materials - for example oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide - in ultra-high purity plants off-site, and transports them in bulk trucks to keep customer tanks topped-up. Remote monitoring allows the company to optimize deliveries to ensure customers always have adequate supply.Lastly, nitrogen is used in such high volumes at modern electronic manufacturing plants that it is most economical to produce it on-site, either as a dedicated plant or as part of the network of plants in a science park connected by a common pipeline. Here, production of gaseous nitrogen is continuous, and supply is backed-up by storing reserve amounts as liquid. Linde LienHwa and its customers monitor the purity jointly in real time.These on-site nitrogen plants are another way in which Linde LienHwa invests with its customers. Because of the size, cost, and complexity of the plants, planning and construction occur at the same time its customers build their facilities. This early investment allows customers to have ultra-high purity nitrogen available as soon as the extensive pipework for their plants are put in place.The company has been increasing its investments in Taiwan. Linde LienHwa moved its global electronics R&D center from the US to Taiwan in 2016. The company expects the R&D center to further enhance the company's development and to provide better quality support to clients.Earlier in 2017, the company also moved its headquarters of Global Electronics from Singapore to Taiwan and re-assigned executives to Taiwan to provide better services for their clients in Taiwan and China.Linde LienHwa said it is not looking to be only a gas material supplier to its clients, but also a trusted partner. With many of its semiconductor clients aggressively advancing into 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, and even 3nm manufacturing processes, and clients from other industries planning to develop new applications, the company has been working closely with all its clients to assist them to achieve their goals.Linde LienHwa's new electronics R&D center in Taichung, Taiwan.Photo: Company

The launch of Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone X has highlighted wireless charging, a function that will also be featured in other smartphine vendors' upcoming models. However, besides smartphones, NXP Semiconductors also sees potential in wireless charging for larger-size applications such as notebooks and even home appliances. The company is already planning to develop solutions with larger watt support.Digitimes recently interviewed Steven Tateosian, director of IoT and Security Solutions at NXP to get a better understanding of the company's latest wireless charging development and plans.Q: Can you give us some idea about NXP's wireless charging business?A: Our wireless charging business addresses applications from subwatt to 200W. NXP started in this business many years ago, with engagement in the Wireless Power Consortium and AirFuel Alliance. As the market has evolved, NXP now focuses on Qi and NFC Direct Charge. This combination allows NXP to enable consumers with a charging experience from subwatt to 200W, in a unified and standard compliant manner.NXP provides customers a variety of 5W and 15W transmitter and receiver solutions for smart mobile devices. NXP is a leading player with solutions for in-vehicle charging of smartphones, where NXP is able to leverage its design for automotive strengths and its wireless power transfer expertise. In fact, our first-generation 5W designs came onto the market in vehicles over the past two years. Now the market is moving to 15W because it improves user experience with up to 3x faster charge times. To follow will be support for larger devices like notebooks, tablets and home appliances.Wireless power is a technology area we have been developing for some time. We have worked in close collaboration with the Wireless Power Consortium since their inception in 2008 to establish standards to advance market adoption and growth. We converged early on in the development of Qi-based designs due to the well established principles of the charging technology and interest by device manufacturers to get a robust and safe wireless charging experience into consumers' hands.With the introduction of the iPhone 8 and X, we expect the market to show growth in the second half of 2017 and 2018. We see this as new suppliers enter the market, and as consumer penetration increases to support the new iPhones.With the recent adoption of Qi in new smartphones, we expect the infrastructure for wireless charging to grow rapidly to allow smartphone users to charge more frequently, from home, in the car, at restaurants, airports, hotels, and more.Q: What is the latest status of wireless charging technologies in the smartphone market?A: The two most influential smartphone vendors have now adopted the Qi standard and introduced devices stretching above 5W power level. We see that every smartphone brand vendor that offers wireless charging supports the Qi standard. As a result, they are actively engaged in building out the ecosystem for this technology. This will continue to drive interoperability across devices from these brands. For example, their adoption of above-5W solutions will also influence car manufacturers to upgrade their solutions as well as drive integration into furniture for as we have seen at China's cafe chain Pacific Coffee.The market is poised to grow, estimating 60-160% CAGR for the total wireless charging market including automotive, industrial and consumer electronics. This would include both receivers and transmitters. Our estimates for the mobile market are more than 50% CAGR over the next 4 years.Beyond charging smartphones, NXP has also announced a medium power wireless charging solution for notebooks, 2-in-1 devices and tablets. Initially, the solution is targeting 65W. It offers consumers freedom of placement and acts as a true power source for the notebook for handling things like dead battery and turbo mode. Applications at higher power levels, such as home appliances will follow.Q: What are the advantages of NXP's wireless products?A: NXP has a strong portfolio of Qi certified wireless power transmitter and receiver solutions and is able to supply complete wireless charging solutions delivering fully certified designs; hardware and software; controllers; NFC readers; power devices; application software and libraries; software development and visualization tools; and application expertise and support.For our latest products and technologies, NXP has recently announced a new fixed-frequency single-coil design, the WCT-15W1COILTXFF, optimized for the latest smartphone charging stations. NXP also has technologies to detect and protect payment cards and RFID tags from damage when placed near an active transmitter.Our key chair positions at WPC are also serving as an advantage for us to drive the standard and the technology forward. Additionally, we are integrating our NFC technology for foreign object detection, especially in regards to protecting consumer wallets with credit cards and IDs.Steven Tateosian, NXP's Director of IoT and Security Solutions. Photo: Company

TSMC chairman Morris Chang's retirement announcement comes at a perfect timing as the foundry house is to celebrate its 30-year anniversary on October 23, 2017. While Chang is to retire next June, this year's anniversary is going to be a "farewell party" for Chang as a large number of heavyweights in the global semiconductor industry are expected to join the party and to congratulate Chang for his accomplishments over the past 30 years.Chang's announcement comes after he has built TSMC into the world's foundry chipmaker with a market value of about NT$5.72 trillion (US$188.1 billion) currently, compared to less than US$200 million when he founded the company 30 years ago.It is also a good timing for Chang to retire as TSMC's profits have hit record high and the business outlook for the contract chip industry is clear.Chang also timed his retirement announcement shortly after TSMC announced in late September that it has decided to set up its first, as well as the world's first, 3nm wafer fab in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP).This decision has been widely recognized as a triple-win decision for Taiwan, TSMC, and the upstream and downstream supply chains of the country's semiconductor industry.But the leadership change also comes at a critical time as rival companies including Samsung Electronics and Intel have been gearing up efforts to vie for contract chip orders from Apple, Qualcomm, Avago, Broadcom and Huawei, among others. Samsung, in particular, posts strong challenge as the Korea-based giant has said it plans to triple its market share in the global contract chip market.The post-Chang leadership at TSMC will have to deal with an emerging market trend where the global PC, TV and smartphone industries - which had previously served as growth drivers for the contract chip market - have become mature and will no longer grow robustly. Foundry chipmakers globally have to look for new business opportunities emerging from new sectors such as IoT, IoV, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous driving.Meanwhile, chip designers, including Apple, will be also seeking to diversify its supplier sources, which is also an emerging challenge for foundry houses.TSMC has been dealing with its major clients such as Apple and Qualcomm for over 10-20 years, and it remains to be seen if Chang's successors - Mark Liu and CC Wei - will be able to continue to secure long-term orders from its major clients.But this apparently is not an issue for Chang as he said he has cofidence in his two successors' ability to face new challenges.

While Nvidia is currently a leading player in the deep learning inference chip market, powered by its GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphics processing unit) processors, other vendors are offering FPGA-based solutions to contest for market shares.For example, Alibaba Cloud has chosen Intel Altera Arria 10 FPGAs to power its F1 instance as well as Xilinx KU115 FPGAs for its F2 instance.Microsoft's FPGA-based Project Catapult servers are also designed to improve its Bing search engine services and Azure cloud computing services, further highlighting increasing influence of FPGAs in the deep learning inference processor market.While the inherent ability of an FPGA to be reconfigured and reprogrammed at any time allows FPGA-based products to be developed rapidly to shorten time to market, the use of Hardware Description Language (HDL) also enables FPGAs to accelerate deep learning inference processes and adapt to the rapid evolving of different algorithms.Meanwhile, Google is also developing its custom ASIC chips for deep learning inference processing. Such ASIC-based solutions will be able to optimize algorithm configuration for specific tasks and also allow streamlined hardware designs and minimized chip sizes to enhance the advantage of terminal-end devices, Digitimes Research believes.