China makers' shipments of touch panels for smartphone, tablet and notebook applications dropped 17.4%, 31.7% and 33.5% respectively in the first quarter of 2015, according to Digitimes Research

Tablet application processor (AP) shipments to China are estimated to grow 18.6% sequentially in the second quarter of 2015 to reach about 29 million units as demand from the end market starts to recover. Top-3 suppliers in China's tablet AP market, MediaTek, Rockchip and Intel, together will contribute 59.1% of total tablet AP shipments in the second quarter, down 0.8pp from a quarter ago. Intel will be the third-largest supplier for the second consecutive quarter

Panel makers in Asia have continued to strengthen their financial performances in 2015 as panel pricing has remained similar to that in 2014 while overall production costs have dropped, leading to increased profits for most makers, according to Digitimes Research

Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asustek Computer, the five largest notebook vendors, saw combined shipments in April decrease 32% on month, while Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics and Wistron, the world's three largest notebook ODMs, saw combined shipments in April slip 16% on month, according to Digitimes Research's latest monthly notebook shipment report

Taiwan-based vendors HTC and Asustek Computer as well as ODMs Foxconn Group (including FIH Mobile and Chi Mei Communication Systems), Compal Electronics and Wistron will ship 25.50 million handsets during the second quarter of 2015, increasing 44.9% on quarter and 20.5% on year, according to Digitimes Research

April average retail price for 7W LED light bulbs (equivalent to 40W incandescent ones) in the China market increased by 23.4% on month to CNY35.9 (US$5.8), while that for 9W models (equivalent to 60W incandescent ones) decreased by 1.8% to CNY38.1, according to Digitimes Research

Taiwan makers' shipments of LCD TVs reached 7.48 million in the first quarter of 2015, down over 30% on quarter and the lowest since the first quarter of 2010, according to Digitimes Research

Global tablet shipments are expected to stay flat from a quarter ago and reach 49.31 million units in the second quarter of 2015, but compared to the same quarter a year ago, the volume will drop close to 10%. Apple's iPad shipments are expected to decline to 9.8 million units, down 30% on year, according to Digitimes Research's latest report about global tablets

Japan's online video market is expected to grow significantly starting the second half of 2015 when Netflix begins to offer its services, NTT DoCoMo launches its dTV Terminal program and the local top-five cable TV operators start offering free online video services, according to Digitimes Research

Networking chipset vendors including Broadcom, Cavium and Applied Micro Circuit (AMCC) have taken the initiative to replace PowerPC and MIPS architectures with ARM's for developments of server processor solutions for new networking communication equipment, including SDN (software-defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualization) devices, according to Digitimes Research

Shipments of smartphones in China totaled 83.6 million units in the first quarter of 2015, decreasing 20 million units or 17.5% sequentially from the previous month, according to Digitimes Research

There were 49.08 million tablets shipped globally in the first quarter of 2015, slipping 35.3% on quarter and 15.3% on year, with shipments consisting of 12.0 million iPads, 19.1 million non-iPad units and 18.0 million white-box units, according to Digitimes Research