Players in the Taiwan industrial PC (IPC) sector are actively undergoing a new wave of mergers, acquisitions or strategic partnerships toward a conglomeration development, aiming to strengthen market competitiveness amid the volatile industry environments and better serve multiple needs of customers.
Among the latest cases in Taiwan are Advantech buying stakes in Winmate, Qisda acquiring DFI and Partner Tech, Aaeon and Ibase Technology swapping shares to form strategic partnership. In addition, Adlink Technology and Arbor Technology have both announced issuing new shares for private placements to solicit strategic investors from at home and abroad, while both Advantech and Foxconn's affiliated Ennoconn also completed overseas acquisition cases earlier.
Stimulated by the rapid development of IoT, industrial IoT, industry 4.0 and smart industrial applications, the essence of the IPC industry has changed significantly, with IPCs no longer just confined to applications under diverse tough industrial environments, but increasingly applied to all the aspects in people's daily life.
Traditional IPC application concepts are evolving to cater to different industrial applications and adapt to differences in customer requirements. For makers, whether to develop more common IPC systems that can support small-volume and large-variety applications or roll out customized production will affect their R&D and procurement deployments.
Amid the changing tides, makers can still maintain viable operations on their existing operating scale, dedicated to special application fields on a project basis. But if they want to expand operating scale or tap more industrial application fields, it is emerging as a necessary practice for them to carry out mergers and acquisitions, so that they can better leverage the consequent synergies to achieve the purposes, industry observers commented.
Article translated by Willis Ke
