Taiwan-based vendors, ODMs and JDMs (joint design manufacturers) will together ship 19.88 million handsets in the fourth quarter of 2015, increasing 1.7% on quarter but decreasing 21.3% on year, according to Digitimes Research.Of the shipments, 19.53 million (98.2%) will be 3G and 4G smartphones, growing 2.3% on quarter but slipping 10.7% on year, Digitimes Research indicated.Asustek Computer will account for 29.2% of shipments, HTC 19.1%, Foxconn Electronics and affiliated FIH Mobile and Chi Mei Communication Systems together 18.1%, Compal Electronics 16.6% and Arima Communications 11.2%.

Pogo Pin will account for over 60% of power charging interfaces used in smart watches and smart bands in 2016, all types of USB together for nearly 20%, and wireless power charging standards WPC, A4WP and PMA for the remaining, according to Digitimes Research.Pogo Pin, due to its waterproofing and relatively low cost, has become the mainstream power charging interface for smart wearable devices in 2015, Digitimes Research indicated. Micro-B USB has been widely adopted by white-box smartwatch vendors due to relatively low costs, while expensive WPC and A4WP/PMA have only been used in high-end models priced at above US$200.In 2016, Pogo Pin will remain as the mainstream power charging interface for smart watches and smart bands, Micro-B USB will still dominate in white-box models, and penetration of WPC and A4WP/PMA will increase due to adoption by major brands.

Netflix has officially made inroads into the Japan market in cooperation with Softbank, a move which will add pressure on local service providers, according to Digitimes Research.Consumers can subscribe to Netflix services in those places where Softbank's services are available. Additionally, consumers can also buy prepaid cards at Big Camera wholesale stores.Netflix is also cooperating with Fuji TV to produce localized TV programs to promote its brand image in Japan. Efforts by Netflix will force local online audio/video service providers in Japan to strengthen their services in order to maintain market share, Digitimes Research commented.Meanwhile, Amazon Japan also began to offer Prime Video service to its Amazon Prime members in Japan starting September. The monthly subscription fees for the Prime Video service are set at JPY325 (US$2.7)compared to JPY650 for similar services provided by Netflix.

Combined smartphone shipments by Taiwan-based handset brands and ODMs declined by more than 10% sequentially to 19.54 million units in the third quarter of 2015, according to an estimate by Digitimes Research.Among brand vendors, only Asustek Computer managed to ramp up its shipments in the third quarter, while HTC and Acer both suffered sequential shipment declines in the quarter.ODM Arima Communications posted sequential shipment growth in the third quarter but other ODMs including Compal Electronics, the Foxconn Group and Wistron all saw their shipments decline during the period, said Digitimes Research.ODM orders from LG Electronics, TCL and Micromax were not strong enough to make up for decreased orders from Sony Mobile Communications and Microsoft Mobile, which affected the performance of ODMs in the third quarter, Digitimes Research commented.In terms of shipment volume, Compal ranked as the largest handset shipper in the quarter, while Asustek took the second position, powered by strong shipments of its ZenFone series.

Mentor Graphics has announced its Veloce VirtuaLAB Ethernet environment with support for 25Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb Ethernet designs. VirtuaLAB is Mentor Graphics' platform for delivering what it calls a fully virtual, block to system level accelerated verification flow for emulation users, by replacing the traditional physical devices used in In-circuit Emulation (ICE) with virtual devices.While previously supporting Ethernet SoC design development with VirtuaLAB, the company has now extended support to the higher-speed Ethernet environment due to the sheer complexity of networking designs. With the large number of ports, expanding throughput, decreasing latency, and improvements in security and ease-of-use, current designs are reaching a half billion gates, the company indicated. Only the largest processor and graphics chips are bigger than current network switch and router designs.For these complex designs (say for a 128-port Ethernet interface with a variable bandwidth of 1/10/40/100/120Gbps), hardware description language (HDL) simulation can be used at the block level, but verification of an entire design of several hundred million gates with simulated traffic is unrealistic. So up to this point hardware emulation has been used for in-circuit-emulation (ICE) mode.However, an ICE configuration requires one Ethernet tester per port. And since a direct connection is not possible due to the different speed domains between the tester and the emulated design under test (DUT), a speed rate adapter is inserted between the two, making the overall setup complex and problematic. Moreover, the entire setup supports only a single user located in the proximity of the emulation lab, Mentor Graphics noted.An equivalent solution using a virtual approach is provided by Mentor Graphics' Ethernet VirtuaLAB. Under this scenario, the Ethernet testers are modeled in software running under Linux on a workstation connected to the emulator, the company explained. This virtual tester includes an Ethernet packet generator and monitor (EPGM) that generates, transmits and monitors Ethernet packets with the DUT. It also has the ability to configure GMII, XGMII, XLGMII/CGMII and CXGMII interfaces for 1Gb, 10Gb, 40Gb/100Gb and 120Gb, respectively.VirtuaLAB components provide a complete software-driven Ethernet stack that runs at up to 15,000 times the speed of traditional simulation, Mentor Graphics claims. If that is the case, it would let VirtuaLab Ethernet users tackle the complex challenges of Ethernet-based designs with improved throughput, advanced debug, power analysis and performance analysis.In addition, the virtualization moves emulation from the engineering lab to the computing datacenter.

Taiwan's revenues for server motherboards, servers, storage devices and related network equipment are expected to rise 4.7% on year to reach NT$494.3 billion (US$15.28 billion) in 2015. The growth will be weaker than that seen in 2014 and 2013, as enterprises have not invested in server products as much as expected. Global server shipments are also expected to drop 6.3% from the 2014 level to reach only 9.71 million units in 2015, according to Digitimes Research's new report on the server sector.Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Inventec and Quanta Computer are the top-3 server makers worldwide with each of them seeing annual revenues from related product lines stay above NT$100 billion.China-based server makers are expected to see their shipments grow 8.1% on year in 2015, excluding the volume from Lenovo's acquired IBM server department. China makers' combined market share will rise to 11.5% globally. If the shipments from the IBM server business are taken into consideration, China's server market share will be higher, Digitimes Research's figures show.With China's server players, such as Huawei, gradually raising their in-house production rates, Taiwan server makers' shipments are expected to decrease 6.7% on year to reach 8.57 million units in 2015 with their worldwide market share dropping slightly to 88.2%.Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta and Inventec are the top-4 server makers in Taiwan, but their shares of Taiwan's overall server shipments have been dropping as brand vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell have been shifting portions of their orders to smaller makers to reduce risks.

IC distribution company Mouser Electronics is undergoing a two-phase expansion at it worldwide headquarters in Texas by making additions to the 492,000 square-foot facility. The first phase, due for completion by early 2016, will add 250,000 square feet to the distributor's global distribution facilities. The expansion is expected to bring more jobs to Mouser, bringing the total to more than 1,400 full-time workers at the headquarters.The growth at the corporate headquarters coincides with expansion abroad. This summer Mouser opened a new customer service center in Tokyo. The new office makes a total of 21 locations worldwide and eight offices in the Asian-Pacific region for the component distributor that caters to electronic design engineers and procurement professionals.Much of the expansion will focus on the distributor's vast warehouse to stock the growing lineup of new products from over 500 manufacturers. The facilities expansion will enable even more efficiencies in the logistics process.The development follows a recently completed multi-level expansion to streamline the warehouse and shipment-fulfillment processes in order to serve customers with order-accuracy and fast delivery, as the company increases capacity to accommodate international growth. With the new expansion, Mouser will gain an additional 300,000 bins for inventory. The last major expansion at Mouser's headquarters was in 2006 when the corporate campus grew from 18 to 28 acres; the building facilities grew from 173,000 to 432,000 square feet.

Worldwide notebook shipments started seeing growth in September after over six months of inventory digestion. The growth was stimulated by Microsoft Windows 10 released at the end of July, and Intel Skylake's launch in August. Digitimes Research estimates worldwide notebook shipments grew 6% sequentially in the third quarter, but they still saw a 9.1% decline on year.Among the top-5 brand vendors, Apple was the only vendor with both on-quarter and on-year shipment growths in the third quarter, while most other Wintel brand vendors only saw sequential shipment growths.The worldwide top-2 brand vendors, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard (HP), both enjoyed over 10% sequential shipment growths in the third quarter. Most first-tier brand vendors have already started preparing consumer notebook inventory for the fourth quarter's year-end holidays. Dell, which focuses mainly on the enterprise segment, saw its third-quarter shipments stay at the same level as that of the second quarter. Asustek Computer had a close to 10% sequential decline in the third quarter because it took a longer time to finish digesting excessive inventory, Digitimes Research's figures show.The Chromebook used to be one of a few product lines that were still able to maintain growth in the notebook market; however, the product line did not achieve growth in the third quarter and its overall shipments dropped back to the level of the first quarter and were down 6.8% on year, the first on-year decline since its debut on the market. With North America's education market already reaching saturation, Google will need to find a new source of growth for the Chromebook.

Taiwan makers' shipments of small- to medium-size panels grew only 6.9% on quarter in the third quarter of 2015 to 307 million units largely due to China makers' furthering their presence in the white-box tablet market. Due to this trend coupled with increased competition in the smartphone panel segment, Taiwan makers' will see their total shipments in the fourth quarter drop 1.1% sequentially and 14.8% on year to 304 million, according to Digitimes Research.Tablet panels in particular have seen some of the biggest drops in shipments, with Taiwan makers seeing a 13.8% decline in the third quarter. The makers reported a 9.2% total increase in handset panels during the quarter and some makers such as HannStar Display have begun shifting back to feature handset panel production in order to offset increased competition in the smartphone segment.In the fourth quarter, Taiwan makers' overall handset panel shipments will grow 2.9% on quarter, with Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) seeing a 4.6% increase in shipments, while tablet panel shipments will drop 4.1%, said Digitimes Research.

The global average retail price for 27-inch LCD monitors in October stands at US$418, increasing 5% on month, which is the highest growth among models of all sizes. Pricing for 24-inch models at US$243 has decreased 4%, while 20-, 22- and 23-inch prices are unchanged, according to Digitimes Research.Monitors sized 27-inch remained over US$431 between February-August and dropped to US$398 on average in September before rebouding back to US$418 in October. The price decline was mainly due to decreases in the US and China as vendors rolled out a series of new lower-priced solutions.In October, a number of new units hit the market including three new 27-inch monitors from LG Electronics that have features ranging from Ulra HD (4K) resolution as well as DisplayPort/HDMI and Thunderbolt 2.0, said Digitimes Research.