Electronics firms have been aggressively pushing their product lineups in an attempt to increase their share of the growing automotive electronics market.
"Most electronics firms hope to leverage their advantages in consumer electronics to tap into the auto electronics segment," said Katty Hung (
Hung spoke to the Taipei Times at the 2006 AutoTronics Taipei show, Asia's first auto electronics exposition, which concludes at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall I today.
According to Boston-based consulting firm Strategy Analytics, the global auto electronics market is poised to grow to US$163.46 billion in 2008, from US$134.13 billion last year.
The lucrative auto electronics business has attracted significant interest from technology heavyweights such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (
Hon Hai is the nation's largest electronics company by sales and also supplies game consoles and mobile phones to customers such as Sony Corp and Motorola Inc. Asustek is the world's largest motherboard maker and also produces personal computers for Sony and Apple Computer Inc. BenQ is the nation's largest handset maker, while Quanta is the world's biggest notebook computer manufacturer.
For motherboard maker Universal Scientific Industry Co (
"GPS solutions will be our major focus for the next five years," said Eric Ho (
Having initiated research into GPS products three years ago, the company has been fine-tuning its software to offer drivers a user-friendly interface, and expects initial orders to pour in during the second half of the year.
China Motor Corp (
Ho added that Universal Scientific intends to market these products to tier-one suppliers in the US and Europe from next year.
"Our target is to boost the revenue contribution of automotive products from the current 4 percent to 10 percent within the next three years. But we have a good chance of achieving that target next year," he said.
Lite-On Automotive, meanwhile, is banking on tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS).
As the US has mandated that all vehicles sold after September next year must have TPMS, this is a big growth opportunity, Hung said.
With parent company Lite-On Technology Corp's (光寶科技)'s Guangzhou facilities set to support auto electronics production in the fourth quarter, Lite-On Automotive will be able to meet its clients' demands by churning out products in large volumes, she added.
Meanwhile, Everlight Electronics Corp (
"This is an inevitable trend for us as business prospects in auto electronics are just too tempting," said Bob Liu (
LEDs are now commonly used in vehicle dashboards and tail lights. Other applications for LEDs include front-turning signals, reading lamps, liquid-crystal-display screens and anything else that emits light in cars, he added.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by