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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Combined revenues of Taiwan's top-3 foundries - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) - are estimated at US$9.61 billion in the third quarter of 2017, up 13.3% sequentially but down 0.1% on year, according to Digitimes Research.