There will be 1.401 billion smartphones shipped globally in 2015, increasing on year by 16.4%, according to Digitimes Research.The shipment growth is mainly because of high growth in demand in emerging markets including India, Southeast Asia and Latin America, Digitimes Research indicated.Google has actively promoted Android One low-cost smartphones in India, Southern Asia, and Southeast Asia and is likely to do so in Latin America in 2015. In the China market particularly, many MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) have been competing for subscriptions and Microsoft has been actively promoting Windows Phone to China-based smartphone vendors of varying sizes and will offer Windows 10 in the second half of 2015.Android will account for 78.5% of 2015 global smartphone shipments, iOS 16.6%, Windows 4% and BlackBerry 0.6%.

The market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has continued to expand, triggering demand for upstream parts and components, according to Digitimes Research.A number of US-based companies, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and GoPro all have announced their respectively UAV development plans.Google beat Facebook to take up the solar UAV maker Titan Aerospace in April 2014 and then Google X lab's Project Wing was made public in August in the year.China-based express delivery company SF Express has begun trial operations of delivering cargos by UAVs , while DHL has started delivering goods by UAVs in remote islands in Germany since September 2014. Meanwhile, Amazon plans to begin trial delivery by UAVs in 2015.While the increasing popularity of the UAV systems may stir up demand for related parts and components, concerns over aviation security have prompted a number of governments to impose restrictions on operations of UAVs, which in turn may impede the development of the UAV market, commented Digitimes Research.

Samsung Electronics had talks with MediaTek over cooperation in the second half of 2014 and MediaTek is expected to become an application processor (AP) supplier of Samsung's smartphones in the second half of 2015 at the soonest to help fill up the gap in the Korea-based vendor's product lineup.After Broadcom quit the smartphone AP business, Samsung has turned to Marvell for replacement and partnered with China-based Spreadtrum to acquire AP solutions for its lower-end smartphone product lines.However, the two firms' ability on product supply and support was rather weak, while their solutions also lack diversity and are not upgraded frequently enough, making it difficult for Samsung to develop divers products using their solutions.Although the two firms' AP supply to Samsung has been improving and turning stable recently with Spreadtrum shipping almost 20 million APs to Samsung in 2014, their efforts are still unable to satisfy Samsung and therefore, the Korea-based vendor has turned to MediaTek, looking to improve its product mix.Samsung has strong demand for the supply of all levels of APs and despite its high-end smartphones having encountered tough challenges from competitor devices in 2014, its entry-level products still enjoyed rising demand in emerging markets as well as Europe and North America.Since Marvell and Spreadtrum's product lineups are rather simple, Samsung is unable to make products that stand out from competitor devices using their solutions. Although their supply is growing stable, Samsung, which has strong ambitions to grow strong in the Tizen ecosystem and wearable device market, the two firms' product quality and ability to support different ecosystem products were both unsatisfactory.MediaTek and Samsung never cooperated over smart mobile devices in the past and the two were competitors in India. However, MediaTek's diverse product lineup for the mobile device market, complete support from the supply chain for wearable, telecom solution and components, and strong technical support services are expected to complement Samsung's gaps.Although Samsung has the most advanced manufacturing process and experience designing APs in house, the company is still aggressively seeking assistance from outside in order to achieve a breakthrough in its product lineup since supplying large clients is the priority for its capacity, and its management over different levels of telecom ecosystems is still not yet mature.With the partnership, Samsung will be able to achieve more obvious differentiation from competitors in the mid-range and entry-level smartphone market. Combining its products with MediaTek's smart family, telecom and wearable technologies, Samsung is also expected to benefit for an increase in its products' added value.Therefore, Digitimes Research believes in addition to mid-range and entry-level products, Samsung is likely to adopt MediaTek's solutions and technologies in its high-end products also.However, Samsung is said to have acquired its supply chain partners' confidential information via partnerships in the past, whether Samsung's partnership with MediaTek is meant to acquire information will remain to be seen.

China's second-tier and white-box players have recently turned their focuses to dual-OS (operating system) tablets and are aggressively preparing to ship these products to overseas markets.Since the dual-OS technology only slightly increases the players' costs and devices with the feature are eligible for Intel's subsidies for Windows-based tablets, such dual-OS tablets look promising.However, dual-OS devices are more suitable for emerging markets that have yet to see a mature development of Google Mobile Services (GMS) and these products are also expected to face challenges in terms of software-hardware integration, limiting their contribution to white-box tablet shipments in 2015, according to Digitimes Research's findings during its visits in the white-box supply chain in Southeastern China.Currently, existing white-box dual-OS tablets are supporting either hot or cold swap technologies. The hot swap technology allows the users to switch to another OS without reboot, but the costs are US$3 more than those for single-OS devices. On the other hand, the cold swap technology, which is simpler in architecture, only has a less than US$1 increase in costs.However, devices using either technology are able to achieve pricing that is more than US$15 lower than that for single-OS devices and by equipping their devices with 1GB DRAM and over 32GB eMMC NAND flash, white-box players are able to further raise their selling prices to help increase their gross marginsWith Microsoft joining Intel to offer subsidies for white-box devices, white-box players in Southeastern China has been aggressively launching tablets combining Windows and Intel Bay Trail-T CR solutions since the fourth quarter of 2014 and achieved sales of 2.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014.Seeing white-box players becoming more aggressive about releasing Wintel tablets, Intel has started shrinking its subsidies on Windows-based devices in 2015, as the subsidies are meant to help it further penetrate into the Android device market. Since dual-OS products are not named in Intel's restrictions, players have then turned to develop dual-OS products to continue receiving full subsidization.The players are able to receive a total of US$10 in subsidies for each device from Intel and Microsoft.Dual-OS tablets enjoy strong demand in China and almost all the new models released after the Lunar New Year holidays are equipped with the feature, currently accounting for one sixth of Intel-based white-box tablet shipments in China.White-box players also prepare to sell these devices to the overseas markets. However, Google is wary of dual-OS devices and is looking to curb their development by tightly control its GMS.As a result, only emerging markets such as Russia and Eastern Europe that do not yet have a mature development of GMS are expected to achieve good sales for dual-OS devices.In addition, hot swap models, which are more popular but harder to design and require more resources to develop compared to single-OS models, will become a challenge for white-box players and its BIOS partners in terms of winning consumers' trust in their capability of software-hardware integration.In 2014, white-box players were able to achieve growth for their Wi-Fi tablet shipments thanks to demand for inexpensive tablets with phone function, while Intel's aggressive actions to establish an x86 supply chain in China and provide subsidies for its China Technique Ecosystem (CTE) project, helped boost white-box players' shipments above 90 million units.However, for 2015, the market has yet to see any significant innovations coming from the technology side that can greatly stimulate demand. Dual-OS technology offers a niche in the market, but challenges still lie ahead for it is the white-box tablet makers.Digitimes Research believes the dual-OS feature will only have a limited contribution to white-box tablet shipments and the white-box tablet market is expected to see over 20% on-year drop in 2015 as overall demand for tablet continues declining.

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.