Global notebook shipments dropped 4.9% on year in the second quarter of 2014, according to Digitimes Research. Despite the end of Windows XP bringing about a surge of notebook orders, panels and some key components were in limited supply, and demand in China and South and Central America was down, resulting in the sequential decline.Despite the decline, Hewlett-Packard (HP) saw 19.1% on-year growth in the second quarter as it capped on business opportunities prior to the discontinuation of Windows XP coupled with aggressive strategies in gaining shipments in the education segment from as early as the second half of 2013. Acer meanwhile reported 31.3% sequential growth during the second quarter as retail partners adjusted their inventories and the vendor released new units.In terms of OEMs, the two largest makers held a 61% share in shipments. Additionally, Wistron saw 13.3% sequential growth while Inventec and Pegatron both saw less than three million units shipped each, added Digitimes Research.

Korea plans to invest KRW323 billion (US$320 million) in R&D to ramp up the production value of its power management ICs (PWM ICs) to US$10 billion by 2022 with a 14% global market share, according to Digitimes Research.Under Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), the government has mapped out a plan to develop high-efficiency power supplies and related technologies for PWM ICs, with participants including Samsung Electronics and LS Industrial Systems.The PWM IC development project will also focus on two major segments: market-oriented applications and core technologies, with a R&D budget of KRW195 billion and KRW100 billion, allocated for the two sectors respectively.Development of electric car applications under the market-oriented sector alone will account for KRW78 billion.For the core technologies, the project will call for developments of related technologies and components for insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) and metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET).

Japan's Ultra HD TV channel, Channel4K, started pilot broadcast on June 2, 2014 and Digitimes Research has found that sales of Ultra HD TV sets continue to enjoy stable growth despite a recent rise in the country's consumption tax. In May 2014, 2.4% of TVs sold in the Japan market were Ultra HD models, which also made up 12.3% of overall sales value, the first time that the percentage has surpassed 10%.In terms of sizes, 50-inch and above models accounted for 20.2% of Japan's overall TV shipments and 36.5% of overall TV sales value in May, growing significantly from the same month a year ago.Pricing is the key driver for Japan's Ultra HD TV sales. Japan's Ultra HD TV ASPs in May dropped 32.8% on year to only JPY330,000 (US$3,256).Among Japan-based TV vendors, Panasonic and Toshiba sell their TVs for prices lower than their competitions from Sony and Sharp in the Japan market. The difference in pricing strategies also meant a difference in market shares: Both Panasonic and Toshiba enjoyed increased shares in the Japan TV market while Sony and Sharp suffered decreased shares. It shows that pricing is a major factor behind Japan consumers' choosing Ultra HD TV models.So far, in Japan only Sharp's Aquos 4K TU-UD1000 TV recorder is natively equipped with an Ultra HD tuner and therefore, only a limited number of Japan families with Ultra HD TVs are able to view Ultra HD content and the broadcasting system will not be completed until players such as Sony starts investing in the Ultra HD tuner development.However, the production of Ultra HD content is a more serious issue.With cable TV content producers lacking interests in making Ultra HD programs, creating Ultra HD content has become a task for paid TV program providers such as J:COM. However, without cable TV content producers joining the industry, it remains to be seen whether the Ultra HD TV channel will be able to satisfy demand from consumers when it officially launches in 2016. In addition, the extra costs that Japan consumers need to pay TV program providers are also expected to reduce consumers' willingness to subscribe to the TV channel, Digitimes Research believes.

Competition in emerging markets continued to be the focus of the global smartphone industry in June 2014, according to Digitimes Research.In China, the race for price/performance ratios was keener for models sold through the Internet compared to those sold in physical retail stores where price reductions were limited in June.Huawei has continued to strengthen online sales of its Honor-brand smartphones with the release of upgraded versions of the Honor 3C and 3X as well as the high-end Honor 6, aiming to compete more effectively against rival Xiaomi Technology in terms of pricing and the pace of introducing new models, said Digitimes Research.While Microsoft has launched the Android-based Nokia X in order to shore up its dwindling market share, Google's launch of its Android One platform for low-cost smartphones with India-based vendors will dwarf the prospects for the Nokia X. Meanwhile, the new flagship models launched by vendors have fewer significant differences as compared to their previous generations, indicating that competition in differentiation for high-end smartphones will gradually be shifting to applications instead of hardware specifications, Digitimes Research commented.

June average retail price for 7W LED light bulbs (equivalent to 40W incandescent ones) in the China market decreased 7.8% on month to CNY34.50 (US$5.50), while 9W ones (equivalent to 60W incandescent models) saw their average price increase 2.6% to CNY47, according to Digitimes Research.Average retail prices for 7W and 9W LED light bulbs in the Japan market in June stood at JPY1,662 (US$16) and JPY2,694 respectively, the former remaining unchanged and the latter rising 11.2% sequentially, Digitimes Research indicated.June average retail prices for 7W and 9W LED light bulbs in other markets were: KRW12,520 (US$11.30, up 1.4% on month) and KRW14,972 (down 9.1%) in South Korea; US$19.20 (down 0.5%) and US$21.50 (down 2.3%) in the US; EUR13.40 (US$18.10, unchanged) and EUR13.70 (down 4.2%) in Europe.Osram's 7W and 9W LED light bulbs available in the South Korea market had the highest average lumen-price ratios of 75.3lm/US$ and 108.3lm/US$ respectively in June. In terms of luminous efficiency, Toshiba's 7W and 9W models for sale in the Japan market had the highest average levels of 74.6lm/W and 100.9lm/W respectively.

Hisilicon, an affiliate of Huawei, has been developing application processors for many years. The company's early products had issues that caused resulted in poor power consumption-performance ratio. But Huawei's strategic support and continuous R&D resource investments have helped improve Hisilicon's products.After releasing its first in-house-developed baseband-integrated AP, the Kirin 910 in 2013, Hisilicon has released the Kirin 920, the first SoC AP in the industry that supports the LTE Cat.6 standard, in 2014. With Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7's big.LITTLE core combination, the AP's computing performance is rather strong, while its independent low-power-consumption core is able to monitor the working process while the system is in hibernation. The high quality audio processing unit is also a major feature of the AP.Digitimes Research believes the Kirin 920 will have a product lifecycle of about one year. Since Huawei is estimated to have over 20% of its shipments adopt in-house developed architectures in 2014, the Kirin 920's shipments are expected to reach 12 million units by mid-2015.Considering the R&D investment (almost US$200 million), as well as the production costs and expenses, the Kirin 920 is estimated to cost around US$20-25.Since purchasing high-end solutions from Qualcomm costs over US$40, Huawei will be able to enjoy extra profits from its high-end product lines compared to its competitors which are still acquiring high-end APs from the US-based vendor. The new business model will give Huawei strong advantages in controlling overall costs, Digitimes Research believes.

The amount of LCD TV panel surface area shipped in the second quarter of 2014 grew 14% on year largely due to an increase in average LCD TV size, according to Digitimes Research.Additionally, many panel makers are bumping up production of Ultra HD TV panels on 5G-7.5G lines, which is pushing down the supply of notebook panels and causing notebook panel pricing to increase.Digitimes Research also said that Samsung Electronics' recent move to release tablets featuring AMOLED panel technology was in effort to sustain AMOLED panel production, particularly as smartphone shipments have been lower than expected.

Intel aims to ship 40 million application processors (APs) for tablets in 2014, up 400% from the volume in 2013, but most market watchers believe such a volume is quite a challenge. Digitimes Research expects the CPU giant to be able to ship 31.15 million APs in 2014, achieving about 80% of its goal, mainly thanks to its cooperation with PC brand vendors, which helped its platform to penetrate into the Android market that has been dominated by ARM.Asustek Computer has adopted Intel's solutions for a whole series of mobile products. Asustek ranks as the fourth-largest tablet brand vendor worldwide, and is expected to become the biggest partner for Intel's tablet APs.Since Intel's solutions are able to help both Android and Windows expand into the enterprise tablet market, and new high-price-performance-ratio 2-in-1 Windows-based tablets from vendors such as Lenovo, Acer, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell will start becoming available in the second half, PC brand vendors are expected to become the growth driver of Intel's tablet AP shipments in 2014.As for the white-box market, with Intel providing subsidies and its China Technical Ecosystem (CTE) project to help develop reference designs for tablets and nurture a China-based supply chain to lower processor costs, Intel's tablet APs started gaining orders from some white-box players in China. However, development difficulties on x86-based tablets, shortages of components from Europe- and US-based makers, which Intel has partnerships with, and the limited longevity of the subsidies still concern most white-box players, Digitimes Research analyzed.

Global top-five brand vendors and top-three ODMs all enjoyed over 15% on-month shipment growth (not including detachable models) in June, buoyed by the release of new models and fresh demand for notebooks after Microsoft discontinued support for Windows XP, according to Digitimes Research.Hewlett-Packard (HP) led brand vendors with the highest 25% on-month shipment growth in June, while Compal Electronics outperformed other OEMs enjoying an over 20% sequential growth. Combined shipments of the top-three ODMs totaled over 10 million units in June, a previous record that they reached 18 months ago. The top-five brands also managed to maintain their shipments flat or continued growing for straight six months as compared to the same months a year earlier.However, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is expected to suspend notebook production at its plant in Chongqing in 2015 as the company is likely to phase out from the ODM notebook business and refit the Chongqing production base for other products.Meanwhile, Sony may resume marketing of its Vaio notebooks but will limit sales in Japan only. As a result, its shipment volumes will not be able to match to its previous records.As being highlighted at the recently concluded Computex Taipei 2014 and GoogleI/O 2014, Chromebooks are to be integrated with more Android applications, and therefore Chromebooks are expected to start enhancing their presence in the consumer market from the second half of 2014, Digitimes Research commented.

The total number of TD-LTE subscribers worldwide increased to 12.48 million at the end of the first quarter of 2014 and will increase to 70.4 million at the end of the year, according to Digitimes Research.Saudi Arabia-based Mobily accounted for 28.2% of the 12.48 million subscribers, followed by Japan-based SoftBank Mobile with 27.5%, China-based China Mobile with 22.4% and Saudi Arabia-based STC with 10.8%, Digitimes Research indicated.As of the end of the first quarter of 2014, 53% of TD-LTE networks around the world were TD-LTE/LTE-FDD dual-mode ones and many TD-LTE operators had transformed operations from WiMAX.In addition to Qualcomm and HiSilicon Technologies, Marvell, MediaTek and Intel will launch multi-mode, including TD-LTE-supporting, 4G chip solutions in the second half of 2014.The total number of TD-LTE subscribers will grow to 179.8 million at the end of 2015 and to 276.2 million at the end of 2016.