Global top-five brand vendors together and top-three ODMs combined both enjoyed over 25% on-month rebounds in May shipments with Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer both seeing over 60% growth. The two brand vendors' strong performance also boosted shipments for their ODM partners Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics by around 30% on month. The shipments do not include detachable notebooks.Notebook shipments' strong growth in May was mainly because most excess inventories from the previous month had been digested, while demand from enterprise and consumer markets started rising after Microsoft stopped providing support for Windows XP.HP and Acer, which made large adjustments in their April inventories, enjoyed giant growths in May. In addition, some of Acer's ex-retail channel partners also started re-placing orders with Acer, helping the company's shipments in May to reach a new high since April 2013, and returning the company back as the fourth-largest notebook vendor.Lenovo and Dell also achieved growth in the month, but both less than 20%. Asustek Computer, after enjoying several months of growth, maintained its May shipments at April's level (not including the T100). The top-five notebook brand vendors together had an on-month growth of 32% in May.Compared to the same month in 2013, the top-five notebook brand vendors achieved 13% shipment growth, the third time they achieved growth in 2014, and also the third time the percentage surpassed 10% since 2013.Since the growth was contributed by factors such as the digestion of excess inventories, the launch of new products, and a demand boost by Microsoft's stoppage of Windows XP support, Digitimes Research believes the evidence is not strong enough to say that the notebook industry has returned back to growth.Wistron had a less than 10% on-month growth in May. Although the ODM saw increased orders from Dell, the boost was offset by decreased orders from Acer.Inventec, which had unsatisfactory shipment performance in April, saw an on-month growth of 25% in May thanks to HP's orders. Pegatron Technology was the only ODM among the top-five to see a drop in shipments in May with a volume of less than 800,000 units because Asustek shifted some of Pegatron's orders to Quanta.Following Asustek's T100 detachable 2-in-1 release in the fourth quarter of 2013, which achieved 500,000 units of shipments in one quarter and received good feedback from consumers, Acer launched its Switch 10 in May to join the competition.Digitimes Research estimates that Wintel 2-in-1s, which turned to target the entry-level consumer market, will have a chance to ship one million units in the second quarter. However, vendors are expected to face issues over balancing prices and specifications as they turn to focus on models with larger size displays in the second half. The problems may also affect the estimated shipments of five million Wintel 2-in-1s in 2014.As tablets are significantly impacting notebook demand, notebook brand vendors have been releasing new notebook products, hoping to regain their momentum. However, products such as ultrabooks, touchscreen notebooks and Wintel-based detachable notebooks have all failed to drive consumer demand in the short term.2-in-1 devices have experienced three phases of market positioning and product design changes. In the first phase, vendors simply changed the industrial design of Android-based tablets to feature an detachable keyboard to try out consumer response.In the second phase, Microsoft and Intel joined the competition and focused on pushing 2-in-1 devices' performance and enterprise value, but did not acquire consumer recognition.In the third phase, Microsoft and Intel turned their target back to the consumer market and are not pushing high-end specifications and expensive prices as in the second phase.The next 2-3 quarters will be a critical period for Wintel detachable 2-in-1s as 10-inch 2-in-1 devices will face fierce competition from tablets, while related vendors, which are turning to larger-size models to expand business opportunities, need to focus on balancing large-size detachable 2-in-1 product prices and specifications.If large-size detachable 2-in-1s are not strong enough in specifications to take over demand for conventional notebooks, the devices are expected to struggle due to having no specific market position, which will limit shipment performance in 2014.The balancing and market position issues will continue to exist in 2015. In addition to Asustek and Acer, whether other brand vendors will be willing to aggressively invest in detachable 2-in-1 products, will become a key factor that affects the market's future growth since the product line is only able to contribute limited profits. Even if shipments are able to break five million units in 2014, volumes will still have trouble surpassing 10 million in 2015.

Until recently, Vitesse Semiconductor saw its core market as being the carrier Ethernet market, particularly what it calls the IP edge, which is anything from base stations to picocells to backhaul microwave/milliwave small cells, as well as routers and switches in the aggregation network. However, the company has noticed that there is demand for its chips and reference designs in the industrial segment, as that market is migrating from proprietary protocols toward Ethernet, and Vitesse has been able to provide timing and low power solutions that fit market needs.Digitimes spoke with Vitesse CTO Martin Nuss just before Computex to discuss the industrial space, which he describes as the part of the IoT (Internet of Things) market where revenue can be found today.Q: How has your work in the telecom business brought you into the industrial market?A: We noticed that there was demand for our chips and devices in the industrial segment because we provide standardized Ethernet solutions. What I mean is that there are a ton of protocols on the industrial side of the market. There is the EtherCAT (Ethernet for Control Automation Technology) fieldbus system. There is Profinet for industrial automation. There are a number of proprietary or semi-proprietary busses out there. The interesting thing is that many of them are still using Ethernet at the physical layer, but then they say Ethernet doesn't do x or y, such as providing ring protection or delivering a solution that is more deterministic - and Ethernet doesn't have that. So they put some proprietary features in there to make it more deterministic in the delivery of packets.But on the carrier side of the telecom industry, we've already worked out a lot of these technologies and implemented them into our Ethernet solutions. We have ring protection and we know how to do timing, which is a key aspect of deterministic Ethernet. We have resolved the reliable delivery of packets in the carrier space over the last year or two, so now customers on the industrial side are realizing they no longer have to only deal with proprietary solutions. They can take advantage of the ecosystem and chip designs that were developed on the telecom side. So, you are seeing increased scale and more new players developing more standardized solutions rather than essentially having 10 little companies delivering solutions at 10x the price.Q: What are some of the key applications in the industrial space that you are targeting?A: Some key areas are transportation, energy and factory automation. For example, if you look at a typical factory automation application these days, pretty much everything is wired by Ethernet, but as I said previously, sometimes there is proprietary stuff placed on top. They used to have proprietary protocols on top to get resiliency. If one thing fails, some other things come up but that is all being done by standard Ethernet today.Q: You also spoke about determinism in Ethernet being a key requirement in the industrial space. Can you speak more about that?A: What I am describing is a system that is predictable and consistent; one that is in sync. And the key is timing. Take a look at high-speed manufacturing lines, such as a high-speed printing press. There are hundreds of motors that need to be synchronized very tightly. This goes for any high speed manufacturing line in general. You have to synchronize events within nanosecond or sub-nanosecond accuracy. If one of them is out of sync, the whole system becomes a disaster.The key to having deterministic Ethernet is the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) or IEEE 1588 timing. For 1588 timing, you send out time stamped packets and there is a grand master clock that puts a time stamp into a 1588 packet (which is an Ethernet packet) and it gets transported through the network. At the slave, the time is determined through a two way handshake protocol between the master and the slave.Previously, problems in a typical packet network were introduced at the hub. You ended up getting packet delay variations or maybe asymmetry. The 1588 protocol, however, relies on symmetry between upstream and downstream and much of this has been worked out in the telecom world, where two new clock classes – the bounded clock and the transparent clock – were implemented in 1588 aware routers and switches to keep errors to a minimum. The first application that actually did that in Ethernet was wireless mobile backhaul. Timing over networks is very time sensitive and while there are no specifications in the ITU for this, base stations have to be synchronized to within a half hundred nanosecond accuracy for LTE, TD-LTE, LTE TDD and LTE Advanced. In the smart energy area, the IEEE has defined a power profile that is fairly similar and which leads to no more than 50ns timing errors. And now we are seeing timing becoming more important in factory automation.It is kind of ironic that 1588 is increasingly being worked into Ethernet. Vitesse comes out of the telecom side which first developed under synchronized SONET/SDH networks where everything was on the same clock but then the whole market moved to Ethernet where everything is packet based and queued. Now the Ethernet world is going back to where they want to have every network element accurately timed down to a nanosecond. The rest of the deterministic equation, where you need to know what time it is so you can determine whether you have to send a packet out within x amount of microseconds, whatever the requirement is, and get it all lined up, is done through timing.Q: Vitesse also speaks about power efficiency; this seems strange when speaking about factory automation. What is your message there?A: Well, lower power means lower costs. But what we are also talking about is being in sync with customer needs and providing the right solution. For example, our main competitors in this segment are companies like Broadcom and Marvell. With their product offerings, solutions scale up evenly, so you can go with a solution that has lower bandwidth, a lower port count and a lower feature portfolio. If you need more features such as service delivery, 1588 timing, security, quality of service (QoS), you need to buy into an architecture that is much higher in capacity and much higher in power consumption. Our strategy is to focus on lower- to medium-range capacity; for example below 100Gbit, but supplied with the full feature set, typically beyond what the competitors offer in terms of feature sets. That is why we end up being much more power efficient without making any compromises on feature sets.And this works for us because in the industrial space you don't need to be applying an 80-100Gbit solution to a 10Gbit problem. For example, industrial applications like printing presses, robotics and high-speed manufacturing feature solutions typically have 3-5 ports of Gb Ethernet. So you are talking about a requirement of less than 10Gbit Ethernet capacity. The industry is a little overpowered from the capacity/feature perspective. Customers don't want to pay for a 48 port switch at 15 watts when they can get a 6-8 port from Vitesse at much lower cost and much lower power with a better feature set and at a tenth of the power.Q: You mentioned how Vitesse is helping firms in the industrial space scale. Can you speak a bit about how that is affecting Taiwan ODMs?A: If you look at the enterprise turnkey model, a lot of low-end enterprise switches from the big vendors are being manufactured by Taiwan ODMs, with those solutions basically being Broadcom and Vitesse reference designs running slightly modified software to fit into the Hewlett-Parker (HP) or some other vendor's ecosystem. This business model makes sense on the industrial side as well, where ODMs partner with Vitesse on the design. They then get their hardware certified to run in rugged conditions while having the ability to slightly modify the API layer to tailor the solution to the end customer.Vitesse CTO Martin NussPhoto: Company

Although not best known for its notebooks, Gigabyte Technology has been operating in the notebook business for quite a while and entered the gaming notebook business two years ago.As one of the top-tier motherboard players, Gigabyte is known for its technological leadership in areas such as cooling and overclocking. These advantages have given the company competitiveness in the gaming notebook industry and helped the company earn recognition from consumers.For 2014, Gigabyte created Aorus, an independent gaming brand and will sell its top-tier products designed specifically for gamers under the brand. The company will continue to release Gigabyte branded notebooks and tablets, but they will be mainly focused on general purpose usage.For Computex 2014, Gigabyte is hosting a booth at Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) Exhibition Hall 1 to showcase its new products. To learn about Gigabyte's latest gaming notebook strategy and the reasons behind the creation of Aorus, Digitimes recently sat down with Vincent Liu, director of Gigabyte's sales division to talk about the gaming notebook industry.Q: What are Gigabyte's plans for Computex 2014?A: Gigabyte is showcasing its latest gaming notebook products including several top-end models under the company's newly created Aorus brand as well as regular high-end models such as the P34- and P35-series, which are branded under Gigabyte.Gigabyte has three notebooks under Aorus: the X7, X3 and X3 Plus. These devices are our latest innovations and designed specifically for gamers. We have equipped them with top-end hardware and compared to our competitors, they also feature competitive price/performance ratios.Q: What are Gigabyte's strategies for the notebook industry? Will the company be developing anything new for the traditional notebook industry?A: For our notebook business, we currently have two brands: the newly created Aorus and Gigabyte. The gaming notebook market is now the main focus of our notebook division (G-Style) and we have grown professionally over the past two years in regards to the manufacture of gaming notebooks.Compared to the gaming notebook models we released two years ago, our new gaming products are thinner and lighter with new in-house developed cooling designs.Traditional notebook shipments have been dropping for several quarters and Gigabyte, as a latecomer, is at a disadvantage competing against other first-tier players in the market because the competition has already turned to economies of scale instead of innovation. For Gigabyte, which started with strong R&D capabilities, the gaming notebook market, which requires high technological involvement, is a more suitable direction to expand into.Gigabyte-branded notebooks are currently being promoted mainly for general purposes include gaming, enterprise-usage as well as traditional applications. For traditional mainstream models, we are offering them mainly to satisfy client demand and will not push them aggressively.Gigabyte's high-end notebooks are all manufactured at our plaints in Taiwan, while design and development of all our notebooks is conducted at our Taiwan headquarters. Through the strategy, we hope to maintain quality and stability, and fulfill our social responsibility to Taiwan.Q: What does Gigabyte think about the gaming notebook industry and its future?A: We are optimistic about the gaming notebook industry's future and are seeing the industry advance and evolve rapidly.Gigabyte is a latecomer to the gaming notebook industry and is facing fierce competition, but our business strategy of delivering the best out of the hardware we use has earned recognition from many consumers and gamers.Gigabyte's goal is to give users the best performance in each price segment, and we have developed many technologies and done product differentiation to accomplish this target.Compared to our competitors, the scale of Gigabyte's gaming notebook business is actually rather small, but after two years of operation, our technologies have started to be recognized by consumers. For now, we are not looking to experience an immediate and large shipment growth, but are instead focusing on earning consumers' trust.Building products that consumers can trust has always been the motto of Gigabyte, and is the business direction we will continue to follow. Despite the fierce competition, we will continue to offer reliable products to consumers.Q: Why is Gigabyte releasing a new brand name for its gaming notebooks? What benefits does Gigabyte expect to see from the new brand?A: Aorus is an independent brand and we will not market the brand as part of Gigabyte; therefore, you will not see Gigabyte's logo on Aorus-branded products. We created Aorus for professional gamers and in addition to notebooks, we also brand our best keyboards, mice and earphones under the brand.Aorus-branded notebook industrial designs also look different to models branded under Gigabyte. Aorus-brand notebook designs look powerful and futuristic, which we are confident will attract gamers. In fact, we have received good feedback from our channel retail partners as well as consumers about our product designs.We have equipped the best hardware in the Aorus X7 notebook such as Intel's fourth-generation Core i7 processor and dual-Nvidia graphics cards with SLI support. To keep its thin and light characteristics, we have designed a cooling module, which features five heat pipes, four air vents, three controllable fan settings and two fans to efficiently dissipate heat generated by the two GPUs.We are releasing our new Aorus X3 during Computex 2014 also featuring top-end hardware.We expect these gaming notebooks to help us advance further in the market as well as keep us ahead of our competitors.Q: Does the company have any new plans for tablets? What does Gigabyte think about the tablet industry?A: Gigabyte has a business unit that handles ARM/Android-based tablets and may showcase some products at the show.As for Wintel-based tablets, Gigabyte has no plans to release related devices. As I said previously, competition over economies of scale is not really something that Gigabyte is good at, and the Wintel tablet industry is currently in such a situation.Therefore, the market will not become a focus for Gigabyte. We will keep all our attention on developing the gaming notebook business.However, we are still shipping existing Wintel-based tablets launched a few years ago, to some enterprise customers and the procurement market as we still see good demand from these segments.Q: What are Gigabyte's long-term plans?A: Gigabyte's notebook business operations will be driven by our brand strategy. Aorus, as an independent brand, will continue to represent our top-end product line, and in addition to notebooks, Gigabyte will continue to add more products under the brand as long as those devices meet the qualifications of Aorus: top-end products designed specifically for enthusiast gamers.As for the Gigabyte brand, we wish to maintain its trusted image and will continue to strengthen related products with quality and stability, but still maintain a high price-performance ratio.Vincent Liu, Gigabyte director of sales divisionPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, June 2014

Ultra HD TV shipments are expected to reach roughly 12.8 million in 2014 and will reach 68.2 million by 2017, according to Digitimes Research.Ultra HD TV panel pricing is continuing to drop to Full HD TV panel prices while TV chip costs are also continuing to drop, which will be major factors in TV vendors' decisions to promote Ultra HD TV products.More than half of the Ultra HD TVs shipped throughout 2016 are expected to go to the China market where low-priced units are expected to drive most of the demand.Ultra HD TV panel shipments meanwhile are expected to reach 17.83 million units in 2014, up 475% on year, according to Digitimes Research.The average Ultra HD TV panel size shipped in 2014 is expected to be 50.8-inch, while the average-size LCD TV panel is expected to be 39.8-inch.Taiwan makers have been responsible for most Ultra HD TV panel shipments in the past but Samsung Display and LG Display are expected to hold almost a 40% share in 2014.Ultra HD TV panel shipments are expected to reach 72.5 million in 2017, with most 50-inch and above size TVs expected to be Ultra HD, said Digitimes Research.Digitimes Research also said that OLED TVs are expected to trail behind Ultra HD TV shipments throughout 2017 as OLED TV material costs are expected to remain high.

With more data center services and cloud solutions have been created on the way, experts are concerned that electricity consumption inside the massive data centers that power the internet and different enterprise server applications. In fact, a survey report of data centers today highlighted it consumes about 2% of the world's electricity production, and increased 7% in 2013 compared to 2012. Data center owners and operators have faced increasing electricity bills and taxes while increasing hardware density and, at the same time, maintain or improve the user experience.In recent years, several server solution providers have worked to create a new 64-bit ARM-based single chip solution driven by lowed power consumption and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) not unlike the one in current Smartphone. Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, a NASDAQ-listed fabless semiconductor company producing computing and connectivity IC chips, has built brand new flagship server chips X-Gene product lines and the ecosystem. It has made it clear they intend to watch the market developed formany years and witnessed not only how data center demands has developed, but also how companies compete amid increased competition in current hyperscale challenges.X-Gene chips promise to significantly reduce the power consumed by the modern server, and that's certainly an attractive prospect for Facebook and other cloud service companies that now run their web services atop tens of thousands of servers.To understand how the server industry is developing in the ARM-based 64-bit sector, Digitimes invites Dr. Paramesh Gopi, the CEO of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, to learn how the company is reacting to such developments and what kind of strategies are helping the company maintain a competitive edge and his outlook for the company.Q: What are the major products or solutions in 2014?A: Our major launch this year is X-Gene, which is the product of our core competencies of 1) brawny 64-bit server processor design, 2) high-speed mixed-signal I/O heritage, 3) broad, fast memory IP, and 4) our ability to integrate all of the above on a single piece of silicon. We also have a family of Connectivity products named X-Weave, that are ideally suited to address the growing need for high-speed, high-reliability communication within and between data centers.Q: From solution point of view, what would be the future trends of data center industry? Why and how things going for the direction?A: First, we see continued growth of the cloud. There will be multiple drivers of this growth: new software applications, more streaming video, more mobile services, more connected devices, i.e., the internet of things, and more enterprise services migrating to cloud. Some of the drivers may emerge more quickly or more strongly than others, but given demand coming from multiple directions, we see demand for cloud services only going up.Second, we see a trend toward driving down server infrastructure costs. We have observed this trend for some time, and we expect it to continue. Innovative new thinking and highly disruptive technologies such as X-Gene will enable this. Specifically, we expect to see higher densities, lower total cost of ownership, and an overall decline in the growth rate on energy consumption by data centers with the adoption of new technologies, like X-Gene.We see software-driven equipment malleability (i.e., software-based reallocation of computing, networking, and storage resources), lower cost open hardware following the massive adoption of open software, and a growing market for ODMs as demand from the cloud continues to drive the white box opportunity, which is particularly relevant in Taiwan.Q: What are the new products or solutions you are going to demonstrate in COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2014 this year? Can you share your views about the business outlook for 2014?A: We are very excited and proud to be demonstrating the great strides we've made in terms of our progress relating to production silicon and the ecosystem development this year at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2014. We will be showcasing the following:The ARMv8 software ecosystem has come a long way over the last several years and now enjoys the full commitment of leading providers Microsoft, Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and Citrix, along with open source stalwarts OpenStack, OpenJDK, KVM and others.Applied Micro is proud to be participating with Canonical on their Ubuntu OpenStack Interoperability Lab. OIL makes it easier for ecosystem partners like Applied Micro to assure the compatibility of our category-defining X-Gene Server of a Chip with the world's leading open cloud platform.Applied Micro and Canonical will also show Ubuntu 14.04LTS running on a 14U rack composed of 1U X-Gene Servers, using Juju, MAAS and charms to orchestrate applications, databases and services. This demonstration will provide proof that Applied Micro's X-Gene, the first (and in all likelihood the only) ARMv8 Server on a Chip product to launch in 2014, will be supported by the dominant open source cloud software framework - on an equal footing with x86-64 and POWER architectures.We have also invited several of our ODM partners to showcase their new and developing products based on X-Gene.Q: Besides COMPUTEX, is there any marketing or product promotion plans in this year?A: Certainly. One that I would highlight in the near-term is the International Supercomputing Conference, or ISC, later this month. Many people might not assume that an ARM-based server processor would be an obvious fit for the high performance market, but the interest and success we're seeing from the high performance community is a testament to the performance of our custom cores and the integrated high-performance analog and mixed signal I/O that X-Gene brings to the market. We are very excited about the breadth of applications for which X-Gene is uniquely suited.It's also quite reasonable to assume that there will be a campaign, perhaps in conjunction with customers and/or ecosystem partners to highlight availability of production units when the timing is appropriate later this year.Q: Is there a successful story sharing to us about your customers to use your products or solutions?A: We have nearly one hundred formal evaluation and use agreements signed by customers, potential customers, ecosystem partners, and the like. Since we have been sampling silicon for over a year now, there has been a tremendous amount of interest and effort in working on and evaluating X-Gene. I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, people are amazed by 1) the total cost of ownership, or TCO savings, 2) the high performance / low-power profile, 3) the range of applications X-Gene addresses, 4) the ease and speed of which software can be ported to X-Gene, and 5) our ability to deliver on what we promised.Q: Any message for Global IT Industry?A: The world has changed. The advent of Open Source, or LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) has set in motion an irreversible trend. No longer is there a need or justification for architectural monopolies and duopolies. In X-Gene we have created not just a viable alternative, but we have, in many ways created a superior product from a TCO and systems perspective.Dr. Paramesh Gopi, CEO of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation

With the IT market shifting from PCs to mobile devices, there has been an increased appetite for support for Wi-Fi and wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and near field communication (NFC). Mobile users are not only looking at emails and texting though; mobile devices are increasingly being used as a viewing device for HD content, which has placed an increased strain on bandwidth. Moreover, the market is seeing more and more new solutions that are being enabled by low-power wireless, such as wearables.Leading up to Computex, Digitimes spoke with Rahul Patel, vice president for Broadcom's Mobile and Wireless Group, to gain more insight into how Wi-Fi and low power Bluetooth NFC are coming to the forefront in the market.Q: Can you give us an update on Broadcom's rollout of 802.11ac over the last year?A: Last year at Computex we said Broadcom's 5th generation Wi-Fi (802.11ac) would be quickly adopted. Since then 802.11ac adoption has skyrocketed. It can now be found in all types of products ranging from routers, PCs and TVs while also being in mobile phones in a big way. Broadcom is looking at unit volume shipments totaling in the hundreds of millions of units. There is a fast adoption of 11ac across multiple market segments and that kind of highlights one of the biggest challenges in the Wi-Fi market.Q: What do you mean?A: If you look at the number of products that utilize Wi-Fi, you are seeing a lot more devices coming into the home that depend on personal home networks. Wi-Fi is being extended to things like televisions, music players and IoT (Internet of Things) devices. And when it comes to the individual user, it used to be that everyone had maybe one device but with the proliferation of tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices we are now seeing 2-3 devices per person. So for a family of four you are looking at more than 10 devices that need Wi-Fi support. We see this as being a problem because the network has to scale and provide appropriate bandwidth for the multiple devices and at multiple distances. To address these challenges in an interesting way, what we did was come up with a new platform earlier this year that we call 5G Wi-Fi XStream.Wi-Fi XStream is a six stream 802.11ac MIMO platform for home networks that can run up to 50% faster than MU-MIMO routers and gateways. What Wi-Fi XStream does is create an environment where all the high priority traffic on 5GHz in 802.11ac will move to one channel of the 5GHz frequency band while lesser priority traffic will simultaneously be moved to other 5GHz channels. The lowest priority traffic that does not have 5GHZ support can be shifted to the 2.4GHz band. So now all of a sudden you have the ability to support Wi-Fi data rates up to 3.2Gbit - or greater than 2Gbit per second of TCP/IP - without having legacy clients (or devices that are shipping today) needing to support multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO). Broadcom is trying to address the problem of the home network by addressing the situation based on the clients that are there today by provisioning this new platform Wi-Fi XStream.So, for example, if you have two MacBooks talking to your 802.11ac 3x3 router, your bandwidth is going to get split down the middle between the two clients. And if you have more clients, such as phones, smartwatches and TVs, the bandwidth is going to get split even more. With 5G Wi-Fi XStream, the high priority client, say the one that is receiving streamed video will get the one channel and will get maximum bandwidth, while the lesser priority traffic will move to other channels in the 5GHz band.Broadcom is solving three big problems here. One is the quality of service (QoS) problem which is effectively taken care of by making sure 802.11ac devices in the home are not sharing with slower Wi-Fi devices, so users are getting a better quality of service and better video experience in the home. We are also addressing the bandwidth problem by making a lot more bandwidth available on the network, up to 3.2Gbit per second. There is no other router in the market today that can provide this much Wi-Fi capacity. And the third thing we address is the problem of range. The clients that need the furthest range will have the ability to choose between one of two channels which would be less congested and would be supporting the furthest reach versus a client that is stuck with one channel operation that is shared between multiple clients. These three issues are becoming a bigger and bigger problem for previous generation routers because there are so many more clients needing support in the home.Q: What is the expected rollout for 5G Wi-Fi XStream routers?A: Broadcom will enter into production in the second quarter and customers all over the world engaging on the platform with shipments in the second half of the year, or shortly thereafter. So we expect Taiwan customers to be launching a number of products during Computex.Q: What kind of adoption rates do you expect?A: Products will be slated for the premium category of the market initially but given that the growing appetite for Wi-Fi in the home and the desire for the market for increased performance in this segment, I expect demand to be much better than we saw for premium routers last year.Q: you spoke about increased Internet of Things devices. I know that that Broadcom has what you call WICED (pronounced as wicked; Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices) for adding wireless connectivity to embedded devices. Can you update us on that platform?A: WICED is a fully integrated software/hardware design kit that can be used to quickly design and integrate wireless into a system for production and shipments. We have WICED Wi-Fi and we also have WICED Smart, which uses a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) module along with Broadcom software SDK.WICED is shipping to many ODM partners in Taiwan. We are seeing tremendous adoption because we make it easy for our partners; we don't require a lot of stringent paperwork to use WICED. It's simply available on Broadcom's website or through our channel partners' websites and we have seen thousands of SDKs and HDKs downloaded and purchased by customers.Q: What are customers doing with WICED?A: We have seen WICED-based designs ranging from garage door openers to music players. Things you see in your day-to-day life can utilize WICED, from hearing aids to lighting solutions. We also recently announced our Bluetooth SoC (BCM20737) for WICED Smart implementations, which will address the need for advanced security to ensure customer privacy. For example, this SoC can deliver on-chip advanced security to prevent hacking of sensitive information in areas such as medical data for IoT in wearable devices. We also added some new software features like support for iBeacon technology for better device detection and identity.So if you look at wearables, such as the Samsung Gear Fit and Samsung Galaxy Gear Fit, these products have Broadcom BLE functionality in them as well. This means you can monitor your heart rate, your pulse rate, the number of the steps you take - basically monitor your health - and quickly transfer the data to the cloud so that the right people can look at the data and make some assessments about your health. Those are some of the big benefits we foresee.BLE is also going to be used for proximity detection. If you are walking in a building and you want directions, BLE is going to help guide you in the right direction because of the radio technology. And these are all going to be low power devices, so they can also be used in applications that are tied to security. In your home, in your door drops, in your cameras - all of these areas offer potential usage scenarios for these devices.Q: Can you talk a little about the wireless charging?A: Let's take for example the protocol of A4WP Resonance. Under this protocol, a device would have to signal a certain control to the battery or the power unit (PMU) where the source of the charge is going to come from. For example, is it going to charge the battery by using wireless charging or will the charge come from plugging the device in the wall? BLE is the wireless connectivity that is going to drive the protocol to control the source of the charging so the battery gets the appropriate charge. You need to wirelessly control the source and communicate back to the charger where the source is going to be from. BLE gives you the ability to wirelessly talk to the transmitter pad or A4WPn and give information concerning whether the device needs to be charged, is fully charged, or how much charging it needs. All that information is communicated through BLE.So if you are wearing a device, you can put your hand on the table and maybe underneath the table there will be a wireless charging pad and your device would be charged automatically. Or at night when you get into bed, you simply put your IoT device on the nightstand where a charging pad is and in the morning it is fully charged. Charging will not compromise the user experience. You don't need to remember to charge or worry that you forgot to charge.Q: What kinds of engagement are you seeing?A: in terms of applications, we are seeing engagement from companies like Samsung, but we are also seeing interest from Taiwan ODMs. Taiwan firms have a big advantage because they know how to manufacture, they know how to design and they are very familiar with Bluetooth. They have been designing with Bluetooth for over a decade, so we expect to see a huge uptick in IoT and wearables from Taiwan ODMs and from China players as well.The key to success will be that companies understand that wearables need to deliver a lot from a productivity point of view. Devices will need to provide solutions that can give you things like the status of your health, or have the ability to guide you indoors if you are lost, or have the ability to receive text messages or have some form of text communicated directly on your wristwatch, maybe even a device that helps you fill out forms.Rahul Patel, VP and general manager, wireless connectivity combo, Mobile and Wireless GroupPhoto: Company

Silicon Image is a semiconductor IP company whose expertise is connecting boxes to displays. The company develops semiconductor IP based on industry standards it has helped develop. For example, it is one of the inventors of HDMI, DVI technology (in association with the Digital Display Working Group) and also the inventor and promoter of the MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) standard. The company is also in the wireless space connecting devices, particularly for wireless video.Digitimes had the opportunity to speak with David Kuo, senior director of marketing, mobile devices at Silicon Image just before Computex. Below are excerpts of his comments.On the latest advancements in technical standards for connectivityOur HDMI technology has been used to connect set top boxes (STB) or Blu-ray players to big screen TVs for over 10 years and at Computex we expect that this technology will be everywhere. For example 4K (Ultra HD) video is a hot trend in the video market and the connectivity support for that is based on the HDMI 2.0 specification released at the end of last year. You will see a lot of companies, including us, talking about the increased bandwidth of HDMI 2.0 (up to 18Gbps) and showing off digital TVs with resolution of 4K at 30Hz (4K30) and 4K at 60Hz (4K60) .HDMI is important in the CE space and in the mobile space we expect that MHL will be the key connectivity technology. The latest development, MHL 3.0, was released earlier this year and it supports connectivity for 4K video (2160p30), a simultaneous high-speed data channel, power charging for up to 10W and the latest HDCP 2.2 content protection. This is going to be big at Computex.In addition, more and more people want the convenience of wireless technology, so we have developed a technology called wireless HD that allows users to support 1080p video without a cable.MHL 3.0 and multimediaAs smartphones and tablets become more powerful, they have the potential to serve as a gaming platform, a multimedia platform and a computing platform. The issue the device makers have is that all that power and capability inside the phone is trapped by the 5-inch display.With MHL, users are able to connect mobile devices to larger screens to provide a whole new experience. Previously, MHL supported only 1080p60 but at Computex this year we will be showing (MHL 3.0) 4K resolutions in products such as phones, tablets and TVs.These developments are based on the fact users are increasingly using their phones as multimedia devices. They download movie content and they capture video themselves at higher resolutions, up to 4K. They want to see that on the big screen and with MHL they can. Smartphones also feature more powerful GPUs, allowing users to play games just like on a gaming console. These users want to be connected a big screen.MHL 3.0 and productivityIf you look at the capability of the phone today compared to that of the PC just a few years ago, we are seeing implementations where the mobile phone can be used as a productivity device. One of the key features of MHL 3.0 is that it incorporates a high-speed data channel so you can combine a video link and a data link into a single link technology that allows you to support 4k video and USB 2.0 functionality at the same time. Previously it was an either/or equation with support for display or USB.So now, a device OEM can develop a mobile device that comes with a docking station. That docking station can have video output to a video monitor. It could also connect to a keyboard and mouse. With USB, storage devices can also be connected and now you have a fully functional PC.The other key aspect is that while the mobile device is connected to the plugged in hub, there will be output power flowing back down and charging the battery of the device.A good example of the potential there is shown with MediaTek's Smartbook concept. It looks like a smartphone connected to an ultrabook but it's not really an ultrabook because it has no computing capabilities. It's just a display, with a keyboard and a battery, and of course with an MHL input. The smartphone can use the notebook clamshell as the docking station and deliver PC productivity.Automotive is another area. Just about every OEM involved with cars is working on a strategy of how to incorporate the car infotainment experience with mobile devices. We are seeing a lot of automotive manufacturers excited by MHL in a lot of phones and video. Consumers want to connect phones to in-dash units or rear seat displays.Importance of MHL supportIf you look at the adoption rate of MHL, there are more than half a billion devices combined out there in the marketplace that support MHL. Samsung and Sony have their flagship products supporting MHL. There is also a wide ecosystem of phones, tablets and PCs that support MHL.Connecting two MHL-supported devices is as simple as using a passive cable but there are plenty of users out there viewing HD video on their TVs by connecting MHL-supported smartphones to the HDMI port in the TV using a converter adapter. But a lot of OEMs see the benefits of supporting MHLs in their displays, as more multimedia content is being viewed from mobile devices. If both devices have MHL support, then the mobile device battery would be charged by the display while they are connected, which makes sense if a two-hour movie is being viewed.The role of wireless videoWireless HD is also a standard and allows a display to present content from a mobile device at 1080p60. We'll be displaying the technology with various products accessories. Sony has seen the potential of Wireless HD and has come out with personal 3D head display based on wireless HD.Wireless HD technology supports the same type of usage models as any other video link using cables but provides the flexibility of wireless. The technology also consumes power at 400mw in 1080p60, which is much better than Wi-Fi.David Kuo, senior director of marketing, mobile devices at Silicon Image Photo: CompanySony HMZ-T3W Personal 3D ViewerSony HMZ-T3 Display

With the LED chipmakers expanding production capacities to meet growing demand for lighting applications, 186-228 MOCVD sets will be shipped globally in 2014, rising 25.7-54.1% on year, according to Digitimes Research.China will account for 63% of the shipments, Japan 14%, Taiwan 10%, the US 6%, Europe 5% and other markets 2%, Digitimes Research indicated. China-based San'an Optoelectronics and HC SemiTek will add 100 and 42 MOCVD sets, respectively in 2014, the largest order volumes among LED makers worldwide.US-based Veeco Instruments will be the dominant supplier accounting for 61.4% of the shipments, followed by Germany-based Aixtron SE with 30.6%, with the remaining 8% coming from Japan- and China-based suppliers.

In April 2014, Google released modular design kits, held its first developer conference, as well as made commitments to release more specifications and a software roadmap for its Project Ara, and the global handset industry began to believe that Google is serious about the modularization of mobile phones, according to Digitimes Research. Google has now completed measurement specifications for the framework for mini- and medium-size modular handsets and will decide the framework for large-size handsets later. Google's modular phones target all segments of the handset industry, including high-end smartphones as well as entry-level to mid-range feature phone segments. Google is expected to engage in sales of basic frameworks but will leave hardware makers to design functional modules subject to compatibility validation by Google. The modular phones will then be sold through Google's online stores as well as other online shops. If realized, the modularization will overturn the ecosystem of the current handset hardware industry. However, the development of modular phones still faces some challenges, including added thickness, increased material costs, more complicated designs and validation processes, commented Digitimes Research.

Ultra HD TV panel shipments are expected to reach 17.83 million units in 2014, up 475% on year, according to Digitimes Research.The average Ultra HD TV panel size shipped in 2014 is expected to be 50.8-inch, while the average-size LCD TV panel is expected to be 39.8-inch.Taiwan makers have been responsible for most Ultra HD TV panel shipments in the past but Samsung Display and LG Display are expected to hold almost a 40% share in 2014.Ultra HD TV panel shipments are expected to reach 72.5 million in 2017, with most 50-inch and above size TVs expected to be Ultra HD, added Digitimes Research.