While today's mobile devices use either UFS (Universal Flash Storage) or eMMC (embedded multi-media card)-based NAND flash solutions to store information, eMMC5.1 chips are becoming progressively unable to meet the data transmission speed demands of high-end mobile devices, according to Digitimes Research.UFS2.1-based NAND flash chips boast the highest data transmission speed of up to 11.6Gbps (1200MB/s) compared to 3.2Gbps (400MB/s) attainable by eMMC5.1 chips. The difference will make UFS2.1 NAND flash chips the mainstream storage technology for smartphones in 2017, Digitimes Research commented.Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Toshiba are currently the major suppliers of UFS-based chips, while Micron Technology is expected to start ramping up its output in 2017. But the supply of UFS chips from these big players has been unable to cope with demand from the high-end mobile device segment in the first half of 2017 as most chipmakers were busy shifting their capacity to 2D/3D NAND flash products. Rising demand from other end-market applications such as SSDs also squeezed supply.With chipmakers planning to ramp up their capacity for UFS chips in the second half of 2017, increased 3D NAND flash capacity coupled with improving yield rates will be instrumental to raising the penetration rate of UFS chips in latter half of 2017. This will pave the way for UFS to spread to the entry-level and mid-tier mobile device segments in 2018.

As dual-lens cameras are being increasingly adopted in high-end smartphones, the proportion of smartphones with dual-lens cameras is expected to rise from 16% in 2017 to 30% in 2018 and possibly to 50% in 2019, according to Digitimes Research.For some dual-lens models, the two lenses have the same specifications, while other models have differing specifications such as resolution level or focal length, Digitimes Research indicated.Dual-lens model come in two structural types:, independent lenses at separate places in the smartphone, or two lenses integrated on a circuit board.Due to technological difficulty, prices for dual-lens models are much higher than for a single-lens, standing at about US$20 versus US$8.Taiwan-based Largan Precision and Genius Electronic Optical, China-based Sunny Optical Technology and Japan-based Kantatsu are the four main makers of smartphone-use optical lenses.Laragn has the largest monthly production capacity at 150 million lenses and will expand capacity to 190 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, followed by Genius Electronic 70 million, Sunny Optical 50 million and Kantatsu 37.5 million units.In addition to production capacity, Largan has seen the highest gross profitability, with gross margin rising from 66.36% in the second quarter of 2016 to 70.66% in the fourth quarter, and further to 70.94% in the first quarter of 2017.

At LED Expo held in Taipei last month, Taiwan-based LED and laser diode makers demonstrated a strong focus on automotive applications.Lextar Electronics showcased an LED automotive dual-lens headlight module with integration of the high beam and low beam, and a laser automotive headlight module, with the former featuring a wide lighting angle and maximum luminous intensity of 70,000cd (candela) for the high beam and the latter featuring a lighting range of 600 meters. Lite-On Technology showcased LED in-car scenario-based lights and automotive sensing devices, while Genesis Photonics exhibited CSP (chip scale packaging) LED devices and dual-color-temperature LED devices for use in automotive direction indicators and daytime running lights.Ultimems showcased an automotive head-up display, a scanning laser projection module through combining in-house-developed MEMS mirror and a RGB laser lighting source. HPB Optoelectronics exhibited an image detecting system for car speed detection, with the system consisting of two laser devices in wavelength of 830nm, a compact camera module and algorithm software.Government-sponsored Automotive Research & Testing Center showcased international regulations concerning automotive head lighting for safety and related core technologies, according to Digitimes Research.

Half a month in late-June European heatwave may make Computex-time Taipei feel actually comfortable; however there was a good reason this time to endure the heat – the ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, held on 18 to 22 June, as well as some interesting post-expo disclosures, made it more than worthwhile.Frankfurt-based ISC, the "International" sister event of the US-based SC annual supercomputer conference, has a higher proportion of both European and Asian vendors, speakers and visitors alike, including those from Greater China – easier visa situation for the EU certainly helps there. The hardware shown at the ISC (and of course SC) is the very top, cream-of-the-crop, aimed at HPC, datacenters, AI and similar server- and workstation-rich applications. Since supercomputing is the bleeding-edge showcase of high end computing, you'll usually see never-heard-of high end CPU and system platforms, as well as interesting integration, cooling, packaging and other approaches normally not seen even at Computex overclocker competitions.For instance, you'll see the Japanese vendors such as ExaScaler/PEZY, with fully immersed (in Fluorinert liquid, out of all) ultradense batteries of Xeon CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, FPGAs and even ExaScaler own SC2 ultraparallel MIPS processor with on-chip 3-D stacked memory and FP performance akin to that of Nvidia Pascal GPU. There are also our usual Chinese friends like Shenwei from Wuxi showing the first concept mass-market 2-CPU liquid-cooled server boards using high end PC-like water cooling from EK, or FPGA accelerator boards trying to get into the overheated coin mining market. I won't even mention the usual chip (Intel, Nvidia, AMD, IBM) and system (IBM again, Lenovo, NEC, Fujitsu, Dell, HPE and so on) vendors.How about the Taiwanese? Guess what, there are few, yet valuable, shows of presence – while Asus wasn't there, the cousin, Asrock, was there, exhibiting the new dense HPC-class server offerings for the X86 platforms. These half-width and full-width nodes may not be anything revolutionary yet, but they are there to meet the needs of general purpose HPC and datacenter clusters. Tyan showed a bit more, including the upcoming Skylake Xeon Platinum (Purley) as well as AMD EPYC servers. It seems that, thanks to the latter one's abundance of PCIe lanes per socket, there'll be many EPYC boards for I/O intensive computing like storage servers for fast PCIe SSD arrays, for instance. Their 2-socket EPYC board wasn't ready for the show though – seems that's due to AMD CPU issues.Gigabyte had similar server stuff on display, except one interesting thing – a tad over cubic-foot sized immersed liquid multi-node computing box in a transparent enclosure. While far from any production schedule, the attempt justifies some praise as just getting an immersed solution to work right, yet isolate the outside world connection for the box from that same liquid, is some work to do.Finally, Wistron's new 2U high compute server box was shown on the fliers – but the specs had nothing in common with the other boxes around there. Dual IBM POWER9 processors, up to 24 cores each, coupled over NVLink 2.0 shared memory links with dual Nvidia Volta compute GPUs on SXM2 cards, with plenty of spare PCIe Gen4 lanes and up to 4TB memory, makes for some 16 TFLOPs double precision performance, and internal board bandwidth numbers far ahead of that seen in the new X86 CPUs this year. As mentioned in my Computex enterprise story, these new platforms were about to come out, and now they are entering the market – bringing the much-needed diversity. Add some better cooling (liquid cooling was everywhere at the exhibition) for higher density, and you may have that better-margin, more unique set of offerings right here from Taiwan.However, they'll have to learn how to create a whole system offering including service and support – in that respect, Chinese vendors like Lenovo, Inspur and Sugon far outweigh them, with multiple Europe installations and full scale support and partner network there, making money out of every step of the process. I've seen some of these systems, like Sugon ARCTURUS in Slovenia, after the expo, and the solution delivery was first-class.It's a good time to move forward now, as EU is contemplating its own high-end processor design for the next-generation large machines, and Taiwan vendors should endear themselves to the powers that be to provide the board and system hardware for such new platform, this being Taiwan's core competency for decades.In summary, the top-notch supercomputing hardware shouldn't be beyond Taiwan vendors' capabilities, as even China is using its No.1 position to spread its wings around. Yes, the most recent Taiwan order for a Fujitsu machine to be the first petascale national supercomputer may feel a little disappointing; however local vendors should be more emboldened with this market rapid expansion and increase their presence – hope the next ISC has twice as many of them, at least.

June 2017 average retail pricing for 7W LED light bulbs (equivalent to 40W incandescents) in the China market increased 13.6% from April 2017 to CNY26.7 (US$3.9), while 9W models (equivalent to 60W incandescents) rose 1.6% to CNY32.2, according to Digitimes Research.Average retail prices for 40W- and 60W-equivalent LED light bulbs in Japan in June stood at JPY1,417 (US$13.0) and JPY1,834 respectively, growing 9.0% from April and slipping 6.1%, Digitimes Research indicated.June average retail prices for 40W- and 60W-equivalent LED light bulbs in other markets were: KRW7,590 (US$6.8, up 1.1% from April) and KRW12,480 (up 1.8%) in South Korea; US$17.20 (up 8.2%) and US$19 (down 1.0%) in the US; EUR6.20 (US$7.0, down 12.7%) and EUR8.30 (down 3.5%) in Europe.Philips 40W-equivalent LED light bulbs and Osram 60W-equivalent models for sale in the South Korea market had the highest average lumen-price ratios of 140.2lm/US$ and 240.5lm/US$ respectively in June. In terms of luminous efficiency, Mitsubishi Electric 40W-equivalent LED light bulbs and 60W-equivalent models available in the Japan market had the highest average levels of 95.5lm/W and 108.2lm/W respectively in June.

There have been diverse opinions about Cisco Systems' continued acquisition policy for over the past 25 years, with one of the opinion groups even arguing that the operating benefits derived from these acquisition projects have been limited, or less sucessful than expected. But for Cisco, this is simply not true.A close look at the acquisition projects and follow-up integration strategies implemented by Cisco over the past two years, clearly indicate that Cisco boasts the ability to synergize and transform target companies in its post-merger integration processes.Cisco has also justified its policy as saying that it has not been eyeing the growth potential of the core businesses of target companies, but rather the synergistic effects between the core technologies of target companies and Cisco's existing technologies and product lines.The takeovers of Meraki and Jasper Technologies mark two recently successful merger cases. The two companies have not only seen their original product lines expand significantly, but have also seen their products venture into other segments after integrating with Cisco's solutions.Cisco's established acquisition policy continued in the first half of 2017 with four deals reached in the six-month period, including the takeover of APP Dynamics for US$3.7 billion, as well as SD-WAN solution provider Viptela, data analyzing startup Saggezza and AI innovation startup MindMeld.Cisco's next-generation network solutions, including Intuitive Network and Intent Based Network, are mixed with a number of technologies such as machine learning, AI, data analysis and security protection, some of which were secured via acquisition projects in recent years.Cisco's collaboration solution, Spark, is being rolled out following the acquisition and integration with Worklife. Additionally, a portion of MindMeld technology will be also incorporated into Spark in order to expand the application scope of Cisco's mobile team communication tools.To sum up, Susie Wee, vice president and CTO of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems, said Cisco's existing teams are always excited and eagerly looking forward to working together with new corporate teams brought into Cisco through mergers, particularly as the market is facing increasing demand for innovations to support ever diversifying technology applications, which require new technologies and resources.

The global VR/AR campaigns that began in 2016 continued into the recently concluded Computex 2017, highlighted by a slew of VR devices for high-end business applications, VR backpacks wirth wireless connections, and also AR-enabled smartphones targeting the consumer market, according to Digitimes Research.However, over 80% of VR devices on display at Computex 2017 were those already unveiled either at E3 2016 or CES 2017. The release of Microsoft 10 MR made itself one of the fresh points at the show. The Windows 10 MR headsets are competitive in price as compared to HoleLens or other VR headsets available in the market. With support from OEMs, Microsoft is eager to expand the VR/MR market.It was also eye-catching to see HTC incorporate Tobii's eye tracking technology into the Vive. The development of eye tracking technology will continue to gain market attention as more VR devices adopt the technology, Digitimes Research said.Judging from the various VR devices displayed by exhibitors, it can be felt strongly that PC makers are trying to maintain the relationship between VR headsets and PC systems. The Windows 10 MR and Star VR are such examples, while VR backpacks are actually mobile PCs. Meanwhile PC makers are also stepping into the VR segment which requires the use of high-end PC systems such as the digital gaming market.

The Japan government, in line with the goal of realizing autonomous driving in Japan before the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, is promoting development and production of high-precision 3D digital navigation maps through directing establishment of Dynamic Map Planning (DMP), a company specifically for the purpose, in June 2016, according to Digitimes Research.Shareholders of DMP include Mitsubishi Electric, Japan-based map producer Zenrin and several automobile makers including Toyota and Nissan, Digitimes Research indicated.High-precision 3D digital navigation maps are used to enable autonomously driven cars to sense gradients and complicated conditions, which can be combined with AI (artificial intelligence) technology to plan optimal routes.Data to be collected include 2D information on roads as well as 3D information such as sign posts and vertical crossing levels. Collection entails use of multiple sensors. In order to minimize collection costs, self-driven vehicles equipped with LiDAR sensors are generally used.In Europe, Germany-based automobile makers have had their cars collect data on road conditions for HD Live Map, an automotive navigation map system developed by Germany-based HERE International.

Because of increased demand from the enterprise market and the fact that the education sector has entered the traditional peak season, the worldwide top-5 notebook vendors saw their combined shipments increase 26%, and the top-3 ODMs 34%, on month in May. The top-3 ODMs together achieved higher growth than the top-5 vendors combined because their proportion of orders from US-based vendors was up from a month ago, while Lenovo performed poorly during the month.Hewlett-Packard's (HP) shipments grew on month in May, helping the company to become the largest vendor worldwide, surpassing the previous month's number one Dell. HP's shipment gap with Lenovo further expanded to more than 1.2 million units. Dell's shipments in May were down slightly on month, but were up over 10% on year thanks to strong shipments to North America's enterprise market, according to Digitimes Research's latest monthly notebook report.Lenovo was the third-largest in May, facing serious challenges in both market operations and personnel management.Quanta Computer's notebook shipments grew 48% from a month ago in May thanks to new projects from HP and increased shipments for Apple's new products. Meanwhile, Compal Electronics and Wistron each saw around 20% on-month growth in May.

The new production lines installed or added at the 6G LTPS TFT LCD plants of Taiwan-based AU Optronics (AUO), Innolux and China-based Tianma Micro-electronics and China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), as well as at the 5.5G LTPS plant of BOE Technology, for production of smartphone-use panels at the end of 2016 or early 2017 have to be overhauled through technology upgrades in order to compete effectively with rivals in Korea and Japan, according to Digitimes Research.Owing to that China-based smartphone vendors used to purchase on-cell touch AMOLED panels from Samsung Display or hybrid in-cell touch LTPS TFT LCD panels from Japan Display (JDI) for their high-end smartphones, flat panel makers in the Greater China area have developed AMOLED panels integrated with on-cell or in-cell touch sensors to cater to the high-end smartphone segment, Digitimes Research said.Major LCD driver IC suppliers, including FocalTech Systems, Himax Technologies, Novatek Microelectronics and Synaptics have all rolled out in-cell TDDI (touch with display driver integration) solutions supporting mass production of in-cell TDDI panels.Since the development of high-end smartphones has been trending toward designs with bezel-less frames, great screen-to-body ratios, and high aspect ratios for differentiation, panel makers in the Greater China area are also urged to adopt COF (chip on film) solutions instead of COG (chip on glass) ones for panel production. However, flat panel makers in the Greater China area may not be able to start volume production of TDDI LCD panels with COF solutions until year-end 2017 as major LCD driver IC suppliers are not expected to be able to supply COF solutions until the end of July 2017, while there is also a bottleneck in the PCB supply chain to supply flexible PCBs supporting COF production, and back-end module makers are also reluctant to commit new investments to support build-ups of new technology, Digitimes commented.