Support for PCIe technology and the adoption of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND to reduce costs are the major focuses in the development of SSD controller chips in 2014. The penetration rate of SSD applications is expected to experience vigorous growth in 2015 thanks to the reduction of related costs and the development of new controller chips, according to Digitimes Research.Marvell Technology is one of the leading chipset suppliers introducing SSD controller chips supporting both PCIe and SATA interfaces in 2014, while also delivering enhanced endurance and data protection. Meanwhile, SandForce is ready to release its third-generation SSD controller chips supporting PCIe with enhanced read/write performance.Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology and SK Hynix have also been actively promoting their SSD controller chips which deliver comparable stability and durability.Taiwan-based Silicon Motion Technology and JMicron Technology have also come out with new SSD controller chips with are catching up with mainstream devices in terms of specifications, and are being adopted by a number of clients.

Although Silicon Works' revenues from the LCD driver IC (LDI) business dropped 8.1% on year and reached KRW128.7 billion (US$120 million) in the first half of 2014 because of two consecutive quarters of decline in iPad shipments, the company is expected to be able to expand its revenues from non-LDI product lines such as LED driver ICs and car electronics ICs in the future as it became a subsidiary of the LG Group in the second quarter of 2014.Silicon Works' revenues from non-LDI product lines were higher than those of other major Taiwan and Korea makers during the first half of 2014, with a revenue proportion of 24.3%. The company is expected to continue supplying timing controller (TCon) applications to LG Display in the future in addition to LED driver ICs, car electronics ICs and power management IC applications.Digitimes Research also expects the company to supply various touch IC solutions to LG Electronics and LG Chemical as a result of LG's stake in the company, which will push up its revenue proportion of non-LDI products in the future.Digitimes Research also noted that Silicon Works' operating profits increased to 6.5% in the first half despite its revenue decline.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) will separate into two companies, HP Inc. and HP Enterprise with the former focusing mainly on PC and printer products and the later on servers, storage, software and services.Digitimes Research believes the strategy will help HP break through bottlenecks in its overall operations, but the company's PC and printer businesses, now under HP Inc. will have issues in long-term development since the company is still not able to achieve any significant results in the mobile market and is mainly defending the PC market and pushing the 3D printer business, an emerging industry, but still small in scale.With bring your own device (BYOD) becoming a trend in the enterprise market, HP Enterprise is expected to accelerate its cooperation with other mobile device brand vendors to answer its enterprise clients' demand for mobile applications. In the past four quarters, the company's server, storage and Internet products have been mostly achieving positive on-year growths (negative 2% to 2%).During the period, although the company's operating profit rates were not able to reach a level similar to those of previous years, they still stayed firmly above 14% and did not drop as in previous years.As for HP Inc., although the printer business is able to contribute strong profits with the latest quarter's operating profit rate reaching 18%, revenues continued to stay in decline with a 4% drop in the latest quarter. Trying to use 3D printers, which are still emerging products, to reverse its situation is unlikely to occur in the short term.The PC business, which contributes 60% of HP Inc.'s revenues, has seen shipments, revenues and operating profits significantly improve thanks to the company's aggressive moves to land education and enterprise orders in the previous year, and strategies to launch new entry-level notebooks and expand related shipments.Since HP Inc. will continue to be operated by its original team, Digitimes Research believes during the spin-off, the company's competitors are unlikely to have much chance to snatch its market share.However, most of HP Inc.'s target industries are already mature. Mobile devices, which are expected to stay the mainstream products of the end device market, are expected to become a weak point of HP's future development since the company has been operating in the related market for several years, but has not achieved any practical results.

In addition to gradually integrating Android's ecosystem into the Chrome OS, Google is looking to support more processors. Chromebook-supported processors will include solutions from MediaTek and Rockchip in 2015, helping vendors to develop LTE-based inexpensive Chromebooks, according to information obtained by Digitimes Research from the upstream supply chain.By boosting device values and cutting prices, the plan is expected to increase shipments of the Chromebook by another 100%.Currently, both Samsung and Nvidia have already begun related businesses, but Digitimes Research estimates that ARM-based processors' proportion in the Chromebook's overall shipments will drop from over 60% in 2013 to only around 40% in 2014 because more brand vendors have released Intel-based Chromebooks due to Intel's aggressive promotions. At the same time, Samsung's ARM-based Chromebooks have not seen shipments grow as much as expected.In 2015, MediaTek's and Rockchip's ARM-based solutions will enter the Chromebook market, but they are unlikely to boost ARM's share back to the2013 level. ARM is likely to have around 50% in 2015.

Global demand for LED lighting products and LED-based lighting systems and services in 2018 will increase from 2013 by 190% and 180%, respectively, and global demand for LED lighting will begin to exceed that for conventional lighting products in 2017, according to Digitimes Research.In contrast, global demand for conventional lighting products in 2018 will decrease 40% from 2013, Digitimes Research indicated.Conventional lighting products are still and will be mainstream in developing and underdeveloped countries, with about 70% of such products being compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and fluorescent lamps. Average annual decreases in CFL use will be higher than that for fluorescent lamps mainly because CFLs will face increasing price competition from LED light bulbs.

The launch of Android One smartphones by India-based vendors in their local market starting September will affect sales of current models priced at around INR6,000 (US$98) as well as low-priced models offered by Samsung Electronics, according to Digitimes Research.Google's push to launch Android One phones in India is not aimed at expanding the market share of Android OS, but rather to strengthen its control over the Android OS and end-market devices in the India market, a business model which Google can extend to other emerging markets.Meanwhile, most brand vendors are releasing more mid-range to entry-level 3G and 4G handsets for the fourth quarter of 2014 in order to minimize the impact of the new iPhone devices on sales of their high-end models.However, most vendors are pushing sales of their 3G models to emerging markets, while promoting 4G models to China and Europe, which will help eliminate competition in the China market, Digitimes Research commented.

The combined notebook shipments (not including detachable models) of the global top-5 brand vendors enjoyed on-month growth of 19% in September and were at a level similar to a year ago because of the distribution of new entry-level models. Vendors' inventory adjustments in August also contributed to the growth.Among the top-5 vendors, Asustek saw 70% on-year growth and Lenovo recorded over 40% growth in September. Hewlett-Packard (HP) was the only vendor seeing an on-year decline. However, the top-3 notebook ODMs did not perform as well as the vendors and only achieved a shipment amount similar to that seen in August.Although notebook demand has started recovering, the number of brand vendors that decided to reduce investments in the notebook market still increased. In September, both Toshiba and Samsung Electronics announced to quit from some parts of the notebook market.Toshiba has quit from China, Russia, Africa and South Korea's notebook markets, while Samsung has quit from Europe's notebook market. These markets were where the two brand vendors were weakest and their absence is expected to benefit other competitors there.Since Samsung also has given up its Chromebook business in Europe, Digitimes Research expects such a decision to cripple its attempt to expand its global Chromebook market share.Microsoft has recently announced its Windows 10 will be available in the second half of 2015. The new operating system will occupy less storage space and can be adopted in smartphones and PCs.Windows 8 users are eligible for free Windows 10 upgrade and the differences between Windows 10's and Windows 8's core designs are not as significant as those between Windows 8 and Windows 7. Therefore, Digitimes Research believes consumers' adoption of Windows 10 should come faster that for Windows 8.

Microsoft, which launched Windows 8.1 with Bing for US$249 notebooks, has recently decided to continue pushing the solution in 2015, but with some modifications on specifications and applicable markets, looking to suppress Chromebooks which have been achieving rapid growth recently.Because of the two product lines' different market positions and value created for the market, Digitimes Research believes Windows 8.1 with Bing will hurt brand vendors' profits more than its effect on suppressing Chromebook growth.Microsoft's new Windows 8.1 with Bing solution for 2015 is set to be released on February 1, 2015, and will be the third time that Microsoft has led an inexpensive notebook project in the past three years. When the notebook market was seriously impacted by tablets, Microsoft had trouble achieving results from the tablet industry, and Chromebooks also started rising.Gradually rising demand for Chromebooks is the driver pushing Microsoft to launch inexpensive solutions and the software giant's competition with Google has also extended from the mobile market to the PC industry.However, compared to Chromebooks which have created value for brand vendors and the market, Microsoft's Windows 8.1 with Bing solution is mainly about low prices and specifications, which greatly worries brand vendors participating in the project. Microsoft will need to resolve such concerns or it could lead the industry further into low-price competition.After seeing global notebook shipments suffer the first on-year drop in 2012, demand for Windows-based tablets remain weak, and Windows 8 fail to boost notebook demand as expected in the fourth quarter of 2012, Microsoft's small screen touch (SST) solution launched in early 2013 provided notebooks and tablets with 11.6-inch or below displays, low Windows 8 licensing fees to help prices drop below US$399.Although the SST solution did not perform well, a similar project still remains active in 2014.In 2013, the notebook market suffered a further shipment drop, declining 10.5% on year. However, Chromebook shipments enjoyed strong growth, boosting the volume from slightly above one million units in 2012 to over three million units in 2013, and also triggering more vendors to participate in development. The rise of Chromebooks pushed Microsoft to launch Windows 8.1 with Bing.Microsoft's solution is mainly targeting Chromebooks and is looking to help notebook products achieve price points similar to those of Chromebooks at below US$249. Microsoft is also aiming to help notebooks using its Windows 8.1 with Bing solution to feature hardware and software at least as good as those of Chromebooks, and therefore has decided to extend display size limitations to 14- and 15-inch, sizes Chromebooks do not usually adopt.

Korea- and Japan-based LCD monitor vendors are continuing to release new high-end monitors, including Samsung's 27-inch S27D850T and IIYAMA's B2888UHSU products.HDMI/DisplayPort are key features for new high-end monitors and IIYAMA is showing signs of using more Twisted Nematic (TN) technology in its recently released units.Digitimes Research believes such moves from the vendors are in order to further carve their presence in the monitor market through value-added products and increase profits as the monitor market fluctuates.

ARM's Mali is expected to become the mainstream GPU architecture for China-based application processors (APs) in the second half of 2014 in terms of market share, surpassing Imagination significantly. However, in the high-end segment, Mali's share will be slightly weaker than that of Qualcomm's GPU architecture due to Qualcomm's advantages in chip design, but will still perform better than Imagination's solution.Among the solutions, Nvidia's GPU architecture has the best performance and its latest GPU core is able to deliver strong performance with low power consumption. Although Nvidia only has limited clients, its shipment growth in 2014 is expected to be better than in previous years, according to figures from Digitimes Research.Vivante has been losing clients and only has two clients in the second half of 2014. The company's market share is also expected to decline in 2014.High definition (HD) mobile has become the main marketing point for mobile devices and even products in different price segments are all heading toward the same development direction: When increasing resolution on mobile devices, in addition to optimizing multimedia applications, developers also need to satisfy demand for 3D gaming applications, which have been appearing rapidly.After experiencing fierce price competition, China's mobile device market started looking for ways to recover and strengthening multimedia applications and releasing high-end HD products have become a new strategy.The GPU is a key component for handling multimedia applications and each GPU solution has its own unique advantages in the balance between technology and costs. GPU solution providers' marketing is also greatly influencing their market shares. Currently, ARM is mainly expanding its market base using its pricing advantages. After gaining the upper hand in the ecosystem, the company is expected to gradually enter into the high-end territory to further stabilize its market position to help edge out its competitors.