More China-based smartphone vendors, including second-tier Gionee, Zopo and Haier, appear to have geared up efforts to promote sales of their smartphones in overseas markets, according to Digitimes Research. Gionee, Zopo and Haier all highlighted their smartphone models designated for overseas sales at the recently concluded MWC 2015, while first-tier vendors including Xiaomi Technology, Coolpad and Oppo were absent from the trade fair this time.Although first-tier TCL and Motorola Mobility (Lenovo) were also present at MWC, the former showcased its Idol 3- and Pixi 3-series models which are shipped to markets outside China mainly, and the latter were displaying three models already launched overseas, said Digitimes Research.

Taiwan's top-three IC foundries will see their combined revenues increase 38.6% from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2015, according to Digitimes Research.Combined revenues for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) totaled US$8.62 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, rising 3.4% sequentially, said Digitimes Research. During the quarter, TSMC's 20nm chip sales enjoyed a significant increase.TSMC saw sales generated from 20nm process technology jump to US$1.52 billion in the fourth quarter from US$630 million in the third, Digitimes Research noted. The foundry moved its 20nm node technology to commercial production in the third quarter of 2014.Combined revenues at Taiwan's top-three IC foundries are forecast to reach US$8.49 billion in the first quarter of 2015, down a slight 1.5% on quarter, Digitimes Research said. The sequential drop would be caused by inventory adjustments at Qualcomm, as well as IDM customers including TI, Infineon and NXP, Digitimes Research indicated.

South Korea recorded production value of KWR2.42 trillion (US$2.3 billion) for robots mainly used in the industrial segment during 2013, growing on year by 6.5%, while KWR737.6 billion was for exports to China and emerging economies, up 23.9%,according to Digitimes Research, citing sources form the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement.The statistics that were recently posted by the institute indicate that Korea's robot industry is still heavily reliant on the Korea domestic market and that industrial applications make up the biggest source of growth for makers both in and out of Korea.Digitimes Research believes that following the developments of other applications related to health will greatly shift demand and bring in diverse revenues, with China expected to be one of the main sources of growth.

With 4G service subscribers accounting for 13% of Taiwan's overall telecom service users and the number of smartphone users in the country surpassing 13.5 million in 2014, Taiwan's environment is already mature enough to develop a payment system using near-field communication (NFC) technology on smartphones. To promote tourism, the Taiwan government has accelerated a reviewof related regulations, and business opportunities from Taiwan's mobile payment services are expected to start popping up in 2015.However, security, mobile terminal support, the government's role in the system and integration with other mobile payment services are expected to be major challenges for Taiwan in the development of a smartphone-based payment system.In Taiwan, electronic payment using pre-paid cards is widely accepted in public transport in some metropolitan areas. People in Taiwan are rather familiar with mobile payment services.Expecting enormous business opportunities, Taiwan's NFC mobile payment platform is expected to be led by financial institutions, telecom carriers and third-party players.The financial institutions include Taiwan's three major financial settlement centers and 32 banks. Their payment service provider trusted service management (PSP TSM) platform will be a distinct advantage in providing services from the financial industry.The telecom carriers will together establish a mobile network operator trusted service management (MNO TSM) platform and work on developing an one-stop integrated value-added service business model in the future.As for third-party players that come from different industries, academia and the overseas markets, they established Smart Catch International in 2014 and will focus on developing host card emulation (HCE) solutions.Digitimes Research believes that the high penetration of smartphones, the people's understanding of the payment system and strong demand will provide incentives and advantages for Taiwan's development of mobile payment systems, but weak integration between existing systems and people's concerns over the security of transactions on smartphones will be key issues that related companies need to address.

China's smartphone application processor (AP) shipments enjoyed strong growth in the second half of 2014 as the country's 4G ecosystem gradually matured. However, the 4G growth came at the expense of 3G AP sales. Currently, the China market's 3G AP inventory has already piled up to tens of millions and even Spreadtrum, who sees the lowest inventory globally, also has a few million units in excess of demand.To digest the inventory, the AP suppliers have been strengthening their sales in emerging markets. They are also considering selling them to tablet makers and increased competition from international vendors could damage China's domestic tablet AP suppliers, which may negatively affect Intel's SoFIA product lineup for the second half of 2015 and may even force Intel to halt its plan of reducing subsidies to partners, according to Digitimes Research's findings from a research on China's tablet upstream supply chain.In the second half of 2014 when smartphone AP shipments to the China market were mainly 4G solutions, 3G solutions were mostly shipped to other emerging markets. However, currency fluctuations in some of the emerging economies undermined 3G shipments: Suppliers temporarily halted shipments to Russia and lowered the volumes shipped to India. With demand from Latin America and Africa only had limited growth, 3G AP shipments declined dramatically in the second half of 2014, leaving a high level of inventory to suppliers including Qualcomm, MediaTek and Spreadtrum.To digest inventory, MediaTek, which used to request its tablet partners not to use its smartphone APs for their devices, has now started to encourage them to do so. Meanwhile, Qualcomm also unveiled a new strategy for the tablet market, looking to clear its smartphone AP inventory via the tablet market.The two firms are expected to start mass shipping their smartphone APs to the tablet sector in the second quarter of 2015, according to Digitimes Research's findings.Rumors circulating in the market have also claimed that Qualcomm is planning to partner with China-based Allwinner Technology, which has seen shipments decline but still has tight partnerships with downstream clients. Qualcomm is looking to establish a cooperation model similar to that of Intel-Rockchip partnership in order to further penetrate into China's tablet supply chain.For Intel, the second half of 2015 will be a critical time to promote its SoFIA platform, but if MediaTek and Qualcomm are offloading their smartphone APs into the tablet market, it could have significant impacts on Intel's promotion of its entry-level solution.In fact, most of China's tablet players are waiting for Intel to unveil the 4G version of its SoFIA solution and only a few have adopted the current 3G solution for their devices to test the water. Although Intel's 4G SoFIA solution is expected to attract good demand, the 3G solution is the main product that Intel is pushing for 2015 as its 4G solution is not scheduled to be released anytime soon. If Intel fails to expand its market presence with the 3G solution, it could dramatically affect its plan and lineup for the SoFIA platform for 2015.Therefore, Digitimes Research believes Intel is unlikely to cut its subsidies to clients in the short term and could even expand the coverage for some specific products in order to expand related shipments and ecosystem.

The launch of Google's Nova project and Cablevision's Freewheel services will help push the deployment of Cable Wi-Fi as well as the implementation of Wi-Fi Only Phone and Wi-Fi First telecom services, according to Digitimes Research.Google has signed cooperation agreements with Sprint and T-Mobile, under which Google is expected to offer Wi-Fi-based wireless services in areas where it has offered Google Fiber services initially, with the Wi-Fi services can switched to 3G/LTE networks when necessary.Meanwhile, Cablevision is enabling the Wi-Fi Only Phone service by adding Wi-Fi hotspots to the coaxial cables used by its cable TV services.The latest Wi-Fi services initiated by Google and Cablevision are in line with the projection of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which said earlier that the deployment of Cable Wi-Fi networks and Wi-Fi First service will gain momentum in 2015, noted Digitimes Research.

Smart home applications are one of the major focuses as part of the ever-growing IoT industry in 2015 and there is much discussion over how to control and connect appliances such as thermostats, refrigerators and washing machines. In western nations where homes are built around centralized air and heating units, demand to reduce energy usage has been spurred largely because of the unnecessary costs involved with heating or cooling areas that are not occupied.In China, however, the culture, design and architecture encompassing the residential sector is different, and local consumers manually control individual rooms, turning on devices such as air conditioners (AC) only when they are occupied. Housing in China, and most of Asia for that matter, are apartments and the concept of a western house almost does not exist in China and Taiwan due to property restrictions. This means that most homes are one level and each individual room typically contains its own external air conditioner that is built in to the wall as opposed to a centralized system that blows air typically from the floors.For Chinese, air conditioners are turned on only when someone is occupying a room. That means if all family members are gathered in a family room then the AC in a bedroom, for example, will not be running. Not only are the Chinese concerned about saving costs, but they emphasize practicality. Hence, there is not a need to have a smart thermostat in the household that can detect when people leave and enter a room and therefore make changes to the temperature. This coupled with the tendency among Chinese to conservatively use ACs (if they even have one at all as most 3- and 2-tier city homes do not) reflects Chinese culture and also the way buildings and homes are designed.Where smart thermostat makers may make a dent is in the industrial and business segments. While similar methods used in the home also extend into these areas, Chinese businesses are cracking down on energy savings and are beginning to see the benefit of allowing smart systems to control such tasks rather than leaving them to company personnel. Connectivity in China is growing and governments are actively pursuing investments that allow for energy reduction in the commercial segment. Beyond that, makers need to consider that not all western concepts will work in China and that the smart home industry in particular is a good example.

In light of slowing sales of high-end smartphones, vendors including LG Electronics, Sony Mobile Communications and Acer all highlighted their new entry-level and mid-range models at the recently concluded MWC 2015 targeting emerging markets, according to Digitimes Research.Having released its flagship model for 2015, the G Flex 2, at CES 2015, LG consequently shifted its focus to entry-level and mid-range smartphones as well as wearable devices at MWC.Sony Mobile's launch of a new flagship for 2015 has been affected by its restructuring program, forcing it to release mid-range models at the trade fair.Meanwhile, Acer, which has been focusing on entry-level and mid-range models since the beginning, is eyeing to strengthen its presence in emerging markets by displaying low-priced and mid-range models, including Windows Phones, which can be upgraded to Windows 10.The slow growth in the high-end segment apparently has forced more vendors to become more conservative on the release of flagship models, Digitimes Research commented.

Apple is set to ship its new 12-inch MacBook on April 10 and has also upgraded the specifications of its MacBook Pro/Air notebooks. At the same time, Apple is reducing the inventory of previous-generation products that are expected to be cannalized by the new offerings. During this transition period, Apple will see a shipment drop over 25% sequentially for its MacBook series products in the first quarter, higher than the notebook industry's overall decline of 20%, Digitimes Research estimates.However, in the second quarter Apple's notebook shipments are expected to grow the most among the top-tier vendors at around 30%, far higher the industry's estimated sequential shipments growth of 3%.The supply chain already started shipping the 12-inch MacBook in the first quarter. When Apple announced the device on March 9, its ultra-thin form factor, low power consumption and new Force Touch trackpad have received positive response from the market. The device is priced starting US$1,299 for the 256GB flash model, the same price point as the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina (128GB).The 12-inch notebook will account for 15-20% of Apple's total MacBook shipments in 2015 and will be the growth driver of the MacBook product line in the year, according to Digitimes Research's findings from the upstream supply chain.As for Apple's competitors, Wintel notebook vendors are expected to reduce their shipments for 15.6-inch entry-level models prior to the launch of Windows 10 in the third quarter, affected by Microsoft's adjustments in its licensing subsidy project.At the same time, the vendors are also likely to turn conservative pushing 14-inch entry-level notebook products (US$249) to avoid impacting shipments of Windows 10-based notebooks in the third quarter.Digitimes Research estimates that the top-2 Wintel notebook vendors, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Lenovo will see 5-10% sequential growths in the second quarter due to their dramatic inventory digestion in the first quarter.However, most other brand vendors will continue to see their shipments stay flat or drop sequentially in the second quarter.

Notebook shipments (excluding detachable models) by the world's top-five brands and top-three ODMs declined 13% and 18%, respectively, in February, affected by reduced work days in the month, high inventory levels of consumer models left over from the previous year, as well as the impact caused by the sharp fluctuation of the Russian ruble, according to Digitimes Research.On a yearly basis, February notebook shipments also showed a significant decline from a year earlier period.Defying the monthly decline trend, Hewlett-Packard (HP) saw its notebook shipments grow nearly 30% sequentially in February thanks to inventory adjustments implemented in the previous month and shipments of low-priced education models to India, Digitimes Research noted.HP also outperformed Lenovo to take the number one vendor ranking in the month.However, Acer and Asustek Computer both suffered serious setbacks in shipments with sequential declines reaching as high as 40%.Among ODMs, both Compal Electronics and Wistron saw their shipments tumble over 20% on month in February. Combined February shipments by Quanta Computer, Compal and Wistron were down 10% from a year earlier, the first yearly drop in nine months.