Global notebook shipments by top-five brand vendors and top-three ODMs declined 15% on average in October, affected by the roll-outs of new low-priced models in the previous month, according to Digitimes Research.However, shipments by top brand vendors and ODMs alike continued to grow for a few months in a row prior to October as compared to a year earlier periods, indicating an acceleration of concentration of the notebook industry.Among major brands, Lenovo, Asustek Computer and Dell posted a sequential shipment decline rate lower than the industry's average, but Hewlett Packard (HP) had a high fluctuation.Quanta Computer performed better than other ODMs in terms of shipments, as rivals Compal Electronics and Inventec both suffered a sequential decline rate of over 20%.With regard to HP's plan to split into HP and HP Enterprise, Digitimes Research believes that the separation will not affect the business of the two units significantly in 2015 as the operations of related businesses of the two units have been steady, with revenue and profit still moving upward and no major reshuffles in management. However, given that the notebook industry has matured, it remains difficult for the new HP,which is responsible PC and printer products, to continue to stay in a growth track.

Thread, a new networking protocol for household appliances initiated by Google's Nest Labs, looks to compete with the ZHA (ZigBee Home Automation) standard, but there is a possibility for the two technologies to integrate together as they share some basic standards, according to Digitimes Research.Meanwhile, the shift from Bluetooth 4.0 to Bluetooth 4.1 as announced by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in December 2013 was also aiming at the growing IoT (Internet of Things) market. But the chance is low for Bluetooth, Thread and ZHA to be blended together due basic technology differences.Since members the new Thread Group include Samsung Electronics, ARM Holdings, Freescale Semiconductor and Silicon Labs, this indicates that the cooperation between Samsung and Google will go beyond Android devices and Chrome PCs to digital household appliances and IoT devices, Digitimes Research commented.The Thread Group is open to business members earlier than scheduled and plans to officially launch Thread 1.0 in 2015 as well as to begin offering verification of Thread-compatible devices.

Taiwan makers' shipments of touch panels used in handsets reached 50.44 million in the third quarter of 2014, down 5.7% on quarter, according to Digitimes Research.The makers suffered from decreaed orders from Apple for the iPhone 4/4S while China-based vendors were still clearing out inventories. Additionally, Wintek's shipments were limited due to financial issues.Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of the year, relevant shipments are expected to increase 6% on quarter to 53.46 million as China vendors ramp up production coupled with local telecom providers holding promotions to increase sales. Taiwan makers can expext to see most growth from on-cell and silver nanowire products.Digitimes Research also noted that the makers' tablet touch panel shipments grew 21.4% on quarter to 12.78 million driven largely due to orders for the Nexus 9 in addition to orders from Amazon during the third quarter. Shipments in the fourth quarter are expected to grow 9.3% sequentially to 13.97 million.In terms of touch panels used in notebooks, the makers' shipments grew 27.5% on quarter in the third quarter but are expected to drop 8.7% in the fourth quarter.

Quanta Computer will ship 49.1 million notebooks in 2015, increasing on year by 7.8% and the only one among the five largest Taiwan-based notebook ODMs that will see sequential growth in 2015 shipments, according to Digitimes Research.Compal Electronics will see 2015 notebook shipments drop 6.6% on year, Wistron 2%, Inventec 9.6% and Pegatron 5.9%, Digitimes Research indicated.Taiwan-based ODMs will ship a combined 134.514 million notebooks in 2015, slipping 4.2% on year, and the corresponding global market share of 80% will fall 2pp on year.Apple currently has Quanta and Foxconn Electronics undertaking OEM production MacBook-series products but Quanta will become the only OEM in 2015.LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology, a joint venture established by Lenovo and Compal in northern China, is expected to increase notebook shipments to 20 million units in 2015. As such, Lenovo's in-house notebook production will rise to 21.8 million units in 2015, taking up 59.6% of its total shipments in the year.

The world's top-six notebook vendors, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Acer and Asustek Computer, will together occupy 81.7% of global notebook shipments in 2015, increasing 1.7pp on year, according to Digitimes Research.With the exception of Lenovo and Asustek, other vendors will barely sustain significant shipment gains in 2015 during which Lenovo is expected to continue adopting an aggressive strategy to maintain its leading market position, while Asustek will try to generate more revenues by ramping up shipments of low-priced models.HP, Dell and Apple will see their combined shipments decline slightly in 2015 as the buying activities triggered by the expiration of Windows XP and Sony's phasing out from the notebook market will dwindle. However, the three vendors will take a combined 40% share.Facing the mature notebook market, product differentiation among brand vendors will become more vivid in 2015, with Apple likely having drastic changes, Digitimes Research asserted.Asustek and Acer are expected to focus on models using Microsoft's Windows with Bing low-royalty program as well as Chromebooks.

A new data storage solutions company focusing on Solid State Disk (SSD) technology has revealed itself by announcing a new SSD controller IC that enables SSDs with densities up to 5 Terabytes (TB). The company, Sage Microelectronics, is currently shipping in volume 2.5 TB SSD units on a single PCB with a standard 2.5" form-factor.Sage Micro's new technology enables a single SSD controller IC to address up to 5TB of flash memory (on an array of 10 X 4 X 128GB eMMC BGA modules), achieving an industry first in high density and small form factor. The Sage S681 device, currently in mass production, employs a SATA II interface to drive 10 channels of SD, MMC or eMMC flash memory cards, with each channel supporting up to 512GB of flash memory."Until now, SSD densities were limited to 512GB by the maximum capacity of flash memory chips, and by the fan-out limitations imposed on flash controllers by the high number of interface traces required for each memory device," explained Dr. Jerome Luo, founder and President of Sage Microelectronics. "Sage decided to leverage the highly competitive pricing of flash memory cards—such as eMMCs—to develop an SSD controller that can effectively address up to 5TB of data."eMMC Enables Higher Density, Eases Design & Inventory ManagementBy offloading the management and high pinout interface of individual flash memory chips to the flash controller IC embedded in each flash memory card, the new Sage S681 can effectively manage ten memory cards, increasing SSD capacity ten-fold.Replacing flash memory chips with flash memory cards does not increase per-byte cost for the Sage SSD controller architecture, because the market has driven flash controller IC pricing to become highly commoditized. This results in flash memory cards being price competitive with the underlying cost of the component flash memory chips themselves. The use of JEDEC-compliant memory cards instead of discrete flash ICs also enables SSD manufacturers to mix-and-match inventory, further reducing testing cost, inventory management complexity and firmware version control.Sage developed a propriety multi-core architecture for its SSD controller IC. Unlike single core SSD controllers from other vendors, the Sage S681 is built on a multi-core processor that devotes a single concise RISC CPU core to SATA bus management, plus additional cores to handle two memory card channel interfaces each. This enables clear firmware partitioning between the SATA interface and memory card interface, simplifying software upgrades, testing and verification.The Sage S68X family of SSD controllers includes three devices: the S681 supports 10 memory channels, the S682 supports 5 memory channels, and the S685 support 4 memory channels. All three devices are currently in mass production.The S681 is available in a BGA 207 package.The S682 is available in a LQFP 128 package.The S685 is available in a QFN 88 package.Sage Micro also offers a portfolio of low-density SATA II SSD flash controller solutions.Experienced Team of Storage Innovators Behind New VentureSage Microelectronics was formed by leading technologists with corporate experience in flash memory and controller design. The company is led by President Jianjun (Jerome) Luo, PhD., who also serves as Director of the prestigious Micro Electronics Research Institute (MERI) at Hangzhou Dianzi University, China.The company's founding team includes senior executives that co-founded storage technology developer Baleen Systems, and held senior executive and technology positions at Synopsis, IBM, Maxtor, Oak Technologies and other Silicon Valley companies. With more than 60 patents granted between them, Sage Micro's core team has decades of experience in innovative storage technology development.The company is financially backed by China-based venture capital and corporate investment from the Cybernaut Investment Fund, Enjoyor Ltd. and Shenzhen Jinchang Asset Management Co.

Global tablet shipments are expected to reach 63.4 million units in the third quarter of 2014, growing a mere 1% from a year ago, showing that the market has entered the maturity phase earlier than expected, according to Digitimes Research's latest report about tablets.Shipments of iPad and white-box tablets were also flat in the third quarter. Affected by a delay in shipments of iPad Air 2, total shipments of iPad devices totaled 15 million in the third quarter, up only 6.4% from a quarter earlier.Third-quarter shipments of white-box tablets were less than those shipped a year earlier period, reaching only 26.2 million units despite subsidiaries from Intel.However, non-Apple tablet suppliers as a whole managed to ramp up their shipments in the third quarter, with Samsung Electronics seated in the number two position firmly. But Samsung has been lowering its shipment target for 2015 due to a lack of models for the second half of the year and its conservative pricing strategy.Asustek Computer has managed to ramp up shipments of its Fonepad and MeMO Pad family products, widening its gap against Lenovo. Meanwhile, Acer, Amazon and Dell took the titles from five to seven, respectively.Taiwan-based tablet vendors shipped a total of 23.13 million tablets in the third quarter, accounting for 62.2% of global shipments in the quarter. Foxconn saw the ratio of its tablet shipments to total shipments by Taiwan-based makers fell to below 50% due to reduced shipments of large-size iPad and ODM models to Xiaomi Technology.Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics saw their shipment ratios improve thanks to increased shipments to Asustek and Amazon.

Taiwan panel makers' shipments of large-size (9-inch and above) TFT LCD panels will reach 67.01 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, down 1.3% on quarter but up 4.2% on year, representing the fourth consecutive quarter of on-year increase as a result of the global economy recovering, according to Digitimes Research.Taiwan's 9-inch and above size tablet shipments will be down on quarter compared to Samsung Display, LG Display and Sharp, all of which expect to see over 10% sequential growth during the fourth quarter as a result of orders from Apple.For notebook and monitor panel applications, Taiwan makers expect to see a small decline as both markets see limited demand. In terms of TV applications, panel shipments will be down following strong demand in the previous quarter when vendors prepared for the year-end holidays. Additionally, LG Display and BOE will begin adding new capacity and production to newly established or existing 8.5G lines, causing some orders to be shifted away.Overall, the makers' shipments are expected to grow 4.4% on year in 2014 to reach 264.7 million, said Digitimes Research.In terms of small- to medium-size applications, Taiwan's related shipments are expected to grow 2.6% sequentially to reach 338 million units. Some orders were delayed in the third quarter to help boost Taiwan's panel volume and demand for phablet devices is expected to increase, which will push up Taiwan makers' tablet panel shipments 4.4% in the fourth quarter. Additionally, the makers' vehicle and PND panel shipments will see on-quarter growth of 6.6% and 4.4% respectively as they further enter the supply chains of major automakers in North America and Europe.

The total number of LTE, consisting of FDD-LTE, TD-LTE and FDD/TD-LTE dual-mode, subscribers around the world will increase to 379.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, growing on quarter by 14.9% and on year by 89.6%, according to Digitimes Research.North America will account for 40.4% of the total number, Asia Pacific for 40.1% and Europe for 15.5%, Digitimes Research indicated. Mainly due to China Mobile's fast growing TD-LTE user base, Asia Pacific will account for 41.5% of global LTE subscribers in the first quarter of 2015, exceeding 38.8% for North America.There will be 306 FDD-LTE networks, 45 TD-LTE and 16 FDD/TD-LTE dual-mode networks in commercial operation around the world in the fourth quarter.Taiwan-based ODMs/OEMs will ship 2.088 million LTE data communication devices in the second half of 2014, consisting of 123,000 dongles, 441,000 Mi-Fi units, 1.234 million CPE (customer premises equipment) units, 21,000 Small Cells and 269,000 modules. Shipments in the first half of 2015 will increase to 2.201 million units.

Intel's Skylake-based processors, originally expected to launch in early third-quarter 2015 to support the release of Windows 10-based notebooks, may not become available until the end of the third quarter or early fourth-quarter 2015. The delay is expected to hurt demand for Windows 10 notebooks.The Skylake series is Intel's next-generation CPU platform, following the existing Broadwell. Because mainstream Broadwell-based processors will not be released until early January 2015, Intel has decided to postpone Skylake processors' ready to market (RTM) schedule to avoid the new CPU platform from impacting the lifecycle of notebooks using the mainstream Broadwell processors.Intel has set the RTM schedule for the Skylake to the 37-47th weeks of 2015 (the end of August to the end of October). If the plan is unchanged, Skylake-based notebook models are expected to become available in the retail channel at the end of September, at the earliest, as the upstream supply chain normally takes another 4-5 weeks after CPUs' releases before shipping out end products.Windows 10-based notebooks are already facing many negative factors that could impact their shipments in 2015: most enterprises are expected to finish their PC replacement by the end of 2014 after Microsoft terminated support for Windows XP; Microsoft will offer free upgrade to Windows 10 for existing Windows 8/8.1 notebooks; and Windows 10 lacks attractive features.The Skylake delay is expected to worsen Windows 10-based notebooks prospects, and may in turn weaken the notebook market's performance in the second half of 2015, Digitimes Research believes.