Taiwan High Tech.com

Contract Manufacturing and Beyond…Future orders: Compal, Quanta, Wistron Dell expects to ship 9-10M NBs in 2004, up from 6-6.5 this year. Compal, Quanta, and Wistron (along with Samsung) will be the biggest winners. The consumer market is expected to account for half of the US NB market in 2004 (with business representing the other half). That's higher than in past years and benefits Dell's direct sales model. X-box D-Link has won orders for the WLAN kids used on Microsoft's Xbox game consoles and deliveries have begun. It seems as if Microsoft is poised for a WLAN device push. In the past, Microsoft sold Accton produced 802.11b WLAN products (cards, AP). Now that 801.11g is the standard, Microsoft is moving on and it looks like D-Link is the beneficiary. Some think Microsoft plans to evolve its Xbox into a home gateway. 2004 HP, Dell purchasing forecasts NB sales are up world-wide and HP and Dell are expected to source more from Taiwan in 2004, with the two firms together buying $29B (NT$1trillion) next year, and $26B in 2003 (16 for HP, 10 for Dell). It seems like most people expect desktop users to start switching over to NBs in the next few years. In addition, the companies will likely buy servers, panels, home entertainment products, and PDAs from Taiwan. 2H03 PC sales up According to IDC, PC sales will grow 8.4%, up from 6.3%for 2H03. IDC raised its forecast for next year too because of slight improvements in the US economy and good 2Q03 sales performance. NB sales will be the main growth driver. 45% of NB orders worldwide are OEM and 94.5% are ODM. Now we understand why Taiwan NB makers seem to be in such good moods these days! IBM NB Wistron recieved orders for two IBM NB series, making it IBM's biggest OEM partner. Wistron will make the X-series NBs (super-slim model) amd a new R-series NB. Wistron - we're very happy for you! A bunch of hard working people who are doing very nicely on their own without big daddy Acer to take care of them... Seeing the future from Taiwan YD always says that you can track the future of global IT through Taiwan OEM/ODMs. Here's an example TSMC, the world's number one maker of built-to-order chips, sees excessive capacity build up in Taiwan and elsewhere in the line and is predicting a moderate recession in the global chip industry in 2005 as a result (although the good news is that 2003 and 2004 will be very good years for the industry). Silicon Image ASIC ordersSilicon Image has ordered TSMC ASICs through its Taiwan partner Sunplus Technology. Ordering that way will save Silicon Image a fair amount as Sunplus gets better prices from TSMC. Source: Digitimes. Sharp LCD TVSharp has ordered 26-inch LCD TV pagels from Quanta for its LCD TVs. Deliveries to begin September-October 2003. Quanta shipped 280K LCD panels in May. It will make the Sharp order at its 5G plant. TAIWAN @ CHINA Teco The move to China continues.... Teco Group has has set up production centers in Wuxi and Suzhou of Jiangsu Province (and a US operating center as well). It hopes to ship 700K LCD TVs in 2004, reaching the top 10 in the world market.Hutek/Ritek Ritek's China subsidiary is called Hutek, and it has won approval to increase investment by $25.3M in its Kunshan factory to increase production to 50M CD-Rs per month. In early 2004, Hutek will start producing DVD-Rs as well. Toshiba losses in China Well, notwithstanding YD's new Toshiba NB, if Toshiba had bothered to ask THT we would have told them going directly to China (instead of through Taiwan) was a bad idea. Toshiba isn't keeping up with Dell and HP in NB sales because it can't rival those companies' abilities to negotiate lower production costs through their Taiwan OEMs. Toshiba must realize the error of its ways: sources are reporting that it plans`to increase outsourcing from Compal from 30-30K units/month to 160K. Toshiba Investment limits to go? Taiwan's government is considering lifting the ceiling on investments in China in order to encourage small and mid-sized Taiwan companies list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and reinvest in R&D in Taiwan. Currently, many companies that want to "come back" to Taiwan cannot because they exceed the current investment ceiling. Toshiba DVD China's Ministry of Information Industry has negotiated a reduction in DVD royalty payments to Philips and the 3C alliance (from $5 per unit to $4 per unit). Taiwan makers in the line are hoping the deal will give them a chance to negotiate better terms as well. ChinaTaiwan's CMC and Ritek are increasing CD-R production at their China factories while increasing DVD-R production at their Taiwan sites. CMC plans to install 21 more CD-R lines at its Shanghai factory by the end of 2004 so it can produce 30M disks/month and is expanding its Taoyuan, Taiwan factory to 30 lines and 15M disks/month. Ritek will lift Kunshan factory production to 40M/month by the end of 2003. COMPANY NEWS AND MARKET TRENDS Dell back to Taiwan! In a strong indication that Taiwan still holds its edge over the mainland for OEM, CENS is reporting that Dell has decided to move its Asia international procurement office back to Taiwan from Hong Kong at the end of 2003. Dell moved the office to Hong Kong in 2001 when it decided that Taiwan was moving too slowly on its "three links" (air, sea, postal) with China. Although not much has changed in terms of the links lately, Dell is coming back to Taiwan and expects to purchase $10B in computer products from Taiwan in 2003. Nexgen LCD TV Nexgen Mediatech Inc. is a new LCD-TV and monitor-production arm of the Chi Mei Group. It recently debuted 20, 27, and 30-inch LCD TVs under the Polyvision brand and as OEM/ODM. The company plans to sell them locally and internationally as 'reasonably priced' LCD TVs. Some are wondering if there will be conflicts with CMO customers, but Nexgen insists there will not be... Digital TV Taiwan is not only making lots of LCD and digital TVs, Taiwanese are also buying lots of them. The Taiwan government expects Taiwan to have a digital penetration rate of 85% in 2006. BenQ's DSC BenQ's DSC shipments should reach 1M units in 2003. BenQ only entered the DSC market in 2H02. It expects to earn NT$1.6-7B from DSC in 2003. It will introduce new models very soon. 3Com Design Center 3Com plans to build a center in Taiwan for the design and manufacture of low-end, standardized items. It will start operations in November 2003 and have 60 employees by May 2004. It will be 3Com's fist such center in Asia. Winbond Electronics Winbond may become the world's No. 1 supplier of pseudo static random access memory (SRAM), which is used in portable equipment such as notebook computers and handsets. Winbond's market share is over 30%. AUOAU Optronics is moving into small and medium size panels and LCD TVs, which bring higher margins and is expecting growth to continue the rest of this year and into 2004. It also expects to ship NB 12M PC panels this year. PrimaxDSC maker Primax has raised its 2003 shipment forecast from 3 to 4M units. TFT-LCDTaiwan's TFT-LCD makers shipped 3.4M panels in August. Of those: AUO, 1.02M (#1 in Taiwan, #3 in the world); Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. (and its Japanese subsidiary IDT), 917K; Chunghwa Picture Tubes, 655,700; HannStar Display, 410K; Quanta Display 380K. In all, the 5 companies are up 8% MoM. ServersTaiwan is expected to have 55-60% global market share in servers in 2003, shipping about 2.5M units this year. Most of the big international brands - HP, IBM, Dell, etc. - order from Taiwan and will increase orders in the future. SOLD!! TO TAIWAN.. CHTCHT will soon offer real-time video messaging services to its wireless subscribers soon. For the service it plans to use Nancy codec technology made by Office Noa. Nancy is also used by J-Phone Japan, AIS (Thailand) and China Mobile (China). Source: Digitimes Ericsson/HTCHTC has chosen Ericsson Mobile Platforms to supply 3G solutions for the development of wireless devices. Only a few companies in the world, such as EMP, provide GPRS protocol stacks, which let phones communicate with base stations and networks. Taiwan hardware manufacturers will depend on these companies more and more to help them create wireless device products across major technologies. EXHIBITIONS LCD TV Taiwan's mfg are moving heavily into LCD TVs, the new high margin, hot selling product in IT. At Computex several companies showed off their new products, including: BenQ, Sampo, Amtran, Gvision, and others. The LCD TVs come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, often include built-in USB hubs and come either digital or analog versions or both. Nvidia high-end graphics processors Nvidia will introduce the NV38 for the high-end market and NV36 for the mid-range and high-end markets at Computex this weekend. Look for other next gen graphics processors from XGI, ATI, and VIA at Computex as well. SEMICON TaiwanSemicon Taiwan is the largest microelectronics manufacturing tradeshow in Asia. It will be held September 15-17 at the Taipei World Trade Center. This year the expo will have special pavillions focusing on emerging areas in microelectronics: microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and III-V compound semiconductors (gallium arsenide, silicon germanium, etc). 500 companies are scheduled to exhibit. NEW PRODUCTSNew Leadtek MBs According to our friends at Digitimes, Leadtek has rolled our six new MBs that support the Athlon 64 FX CPU from AMD. The CPU is known (and named, apparently) for its64-bit data security system. The MB series is called WinFast K8 series. They also support the Opteron series CPUs (Sockets 754 and 940) and feature XBIOS II. Realtek chips Realtek has entered volume production of its Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) MAC/PHY single chips. The chips are already being shipped to network equipment makers Edimax Technology and Netronix. Realtek's chip sells for about half of what Marvell and Broadcom ask for their similar chips. SampoSampo launched a new line of high-end home appliances to compete with Japanese imports and avoid price wars with local competitors. The products will be released under the "Claire" brand name. The first products are 20, 27 and 30-inch LCD TVs. Sampo is also targeting the European and US markets with Claire. BenQ digital projectorBenQ has launched a new digital projector – the PB2120 - in the under $1,000 category. It is aimed at the SOHO market and will be sold through BenQ's distribution network in the US. Source: Digitimes SMARTPHONES/PDA NEWS Mitac smartphone @ Computex Mitac introduced at Computex the world's first Microsoft 2003 OS Smartphone, the Mio 8390. It has: 200MHz Intel Dalhart processor, a 65,000-color TFT LCD panel, 40 polyphonic ring tones, MMS support, Java MIDP 2.0 support and a VGA CMOS built-in digital camera, a slot for SD I/O~MMC Secure Digital (SD) cards. HTCHTC's 1H03 revenue reached NT$ 9,096M. Before and after tax net income were both up over 100% YoY. HTC is makeing Microsoft's smartphone that has a built-in camera and Bluetooth, Orange's SPV Smartphone, HP's iPAQ and more... Motorola handset orders? Motorola is expected to issue a new handset OEM order to Taiwan soon and Chi Mei (CMO) is the favored candidate (and not BenQ. BenQ's old R&D chief has moved to CMC, by the way. Chi Mei will launch 3-4 new handsets in the next year, including to GPRS models, and a smartphone in 1H04. Mitac smartphonesOn July 17, Mitac will begin selling its Mio 8380 smartphone in Taiwan and Hong on July 17th. It will sell for NT$16,800 ($489) and HK$3,880 ($497). Smartphone utilityThere are 11.9M mobile phone data users in the US - customers who use email, web browsing, SMS, gaming and corporate database access through their cell phones. They are able enter texts on their mobile devices because of the T9 system developed by Tegic Communications. The system is not very convenient for entering large amounts of data, but the alternatives - to date - larger keyboards or touchscreens, compromise on size. The leading other alternative is Keytouch, developed by a Taiwanese American Leon Chang, which uses a gamepad for character selection. Mitac has big handset dreamsMitac is counting on its Mio brand handsets becoming the biggest selling high-end brand in China. Mitac partners with Chinese Electronics Corporation Telecom (CECT), a local handset vendor which markets and distributes the phones in China. Mitac will launch two more smartphones this year and expects to ship 50K units per month. In Taiwan, Mitac sells Mio phones together with Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) and Synnex. HTC 2In June HTC's revenues were up 53.7% MoM (NT$1.75B). Why? New Pocket PC shipments to HP. HTC looks like it's fast making a recovery from a slow SARS affected 2Q when its engineers couldn't go to visit the China factories. HTC 1HTC is bringing out some new products soon, including a new iPAQ Pocket PC for HP, an upgraded XDA for mmO2, a CDMA version of XDA, codenamed Falcon, and the upgraded SPV/SPV e100 Microsoft Smartphone. Wireless chipsetALi Corp will soon introduce its M4305 Wireless chipset, a single chip with client-side dual-band, triple-mode wireless LAN controller, combining a MAC layer and base-band processor. The chipset incorporates WHQL-certified driver support and is compatible with IEEE standards 802.11a/b/g, and 11i and .11h. BenQ has adopted ALi's chipsets Joybook products. Gateway M500Wistron will make Gateway's first wide-screen 15.2 inch NB, equipped with 2.2GHz Pentium 4-M processor and 4GB hard drive. The NB will look a lot like Legend's (China) 1+1 L800 N, also made by Wistron. Wistron ships about 10K units of the M500 to Gateway a month. Gateway usually orders from Quanta, and this is its first order to Wistron.1H03 shipping data for all notebook makers BenQ handsetsBenQ will launch two new own-brand handsets next week. Model 650D will be mid-priced, clamshell style with dual screen design. M550G will be for the low-end market. BenQ markets own brand handsets only in Taiwan, where it expects to sell 400K units this year. Look for BenQ's smartphone, the Symbian-powered P30, in 2H03. Mobile phones - ODM goes direct to service providersA new trend in mobile phones is emerging. In addition to selling phones to Nokia and Motorola, mobile phone ODMs such as HTC, BenQ, AlphaCell (Israel), Microcell Oy (Finland), Sendo (UK), are selling phones directly to wireless telecom service providers. The ODMs offer service providers lower prices (without the markeups by the 'middlemen' Nokia and Motorola) and more flexibility in design and customization. Cell phone operators are drawn to that customization as they try to lure customers into purchasing addditional services. A major reason for the success of this new business model is the availability of Microsoft's smartphone software. Mitac pocket PCsMitac has launched two new branded PCs, the Mio 339 and Mio 558. The Mio 339 is a lower end model aimed at young adults. It has an MP3 player, 3K pixel digital camera and a 400MHz Intel PXA255 processor that runs the Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 OS. The Mio 558 is higher end and for professionals. It has Bluetooth and 802.11b wireless connectivity built-in, VoIP functionality Windows Mobile 2003 OS, 400MHz Intel PXA263 processor and dual slot configuration that supports both CompactFlash (CF) II and SD I/O~MMC Secure Digital (SD) formats. They will go on the market in Taiwan for $315 (Mio 339) and $480 (Mio 558). Tracking the economy: Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves: US$128.03 (world's third largest)The 2003 growth forecast guessing game: Taiwan's Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) : 1.96%Morgan Stanley : 2.3%The Directorate General of Budget (GDBAS): 3.06% for 2003, 3.81 for 2004.The Institute of Economics of the Academia Sinica : 3.31%ABN AMRO Securities : 2.70% (from 3.5%. May 13th)The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) : 3.53% (July 25, 2003)Taiwan Research Institute (TRI) : 3.42%Goldman Sachs : 3.9%The chief economist of Deutsche Bank AG : 4% for 2003, 6% for 2004.