Taiwan's handset shipments registered growth in second-quarter 2015 thanks to impressive increases in shipments from Asustek and Acer. The strong showing of Asustek was in sharp contrast to the problems haunting HTC, whose global vendor rankings continued to slip.
China's smartphone AP shipments recovered in the second quarter of 2015, registering significant on-year growth after vendors had managed to digest their inventories in the previous quarter.
The global notebook market remained sluggish in the second quarter of 2015. The seasonal pattern that has governed the notebook market previously will not appear in 2015, with Taiwan makers set to see on-year declines in the shipments during the second half of the year.
The wearables market is a growing focal point for many vendors and players in the display panel supply chain. This Digitimes Research Special Report looks at developments in panel applications in the wearable industry, with a specific focus on panel makers in Greater China. The report also covers the investments being made moving forward (through 2017) in order to meet end-market demand, including capacity expansion for small- to medium-size TFT LCD and AMOLED panels.
As white LED applications are becoming more widely accepted and common in the market and China makers push more price-competitive solutions, the 2015 global high-brightness LED output value is expected to only grow 7.5% on year. It is not surprising that in a market with limited growth, makers are turning to applications such as UV LEDs to increase profits. This DIGITIMES Research Special Report analyzes the developments, supply chain and makers associated with UV LED technology.
This Digitimes Research Special Report details Intel's mobile AP strategies, status, advantages, partnerships and operating system support for different smart mobile device markets. It analyzes the CPU giant's operation progress in different industries in 2014 and forecasts Intel's development and direction for 2015 and beyond.
Digitimes Research predicts China smartphone AP shipments in second-quarter 2015 will show annual growth due to the depletion of inventories in the first quarter of 2015 and new smartphone products being introduced which contains new AP solutions. The new product launches will help to warm up the market. Although the second quarter is a traditional low season, shipments are expected to show an on-quarter increase of 17.6% while on-year shipment growth will reach 18.4%, 4.4% higher than the on-year shipment growth in the first quarter of 2015.
Most of Taiwan's handset makers felt strong seasonal effects in the first quarter. Foxconn suffered particularly as a result of drastic drops in orders from Sony Mobile and Microsoft Mobile.
According to Digitimes Research's survey of the Mainland China smartphone supply chain, as well as other relative vendors, increased demand for Apple's new device models, Mainland China's high-end smartphone models experienced lackluster sales in the first quarter of 2015.
DSCs continue to be cannibalized by smartphones with increasingly better camera functions. Taiwan's DSC makers saw a short-lived rebound in shipments in fourth-quarter 2014, but slipped back to a downward trend in first-quarter 2015.
The retail market was unable to digest the massive inventory of inexpensive notebooks in first-quarter 2015. The result was drastic drops in orders from vendors for their Taiwan-based ODMs, who were hit by the worst-ever sequential decline in shipments they had ever seen.
