China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) chairman Xi Guohua (奚國華) yesterday called for deepening collaboration with Taiwanese companies in developing next-generation 5G wireless technology amid a battle for technological dominance.
China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom by subscribers, has worked with local firms including MediaTek Inc (聯發科) and HTC Corp (宏達電) in building the 4G TD-LTE ecosystem.
“Both sides should extend the partnership in forming the 5G standard, as the technology is still in the nascent stage,” Xi told reporters on the sidelines of the annual Global TD LTE Initiative (GTI) workshop.
The workshop covers the convergence of two long-term evolution technologies: time-division duplex (TDD) and frequency-division duplex (FDD), and is in Hsinchu.
“We can create a win-win situation, as Taiwan is good at chip designing and chip manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) holds a 50 percent global share. Taiwan is also good at making handsets,” Xi said.
Besides, Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) has strong technological capabilities and is good at commercializing cutting-edge technologies, Xi said.
“Amid stiff competition, only companies seizing control of the technology standard and intellectual property can gain the upper hand,” Xi said.
As Taiwan’s ITRI, HTC and MediaTek are members of the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), they have a say in developing the 5G technology standard and therefore could play a key role in the battle for 5G dominance.
The 3GPP is a standards body that works within the scope of the International Telecommunications Union and has helped create the 3G and 4G standards, and is developing next-generation wireless technologies. The China Communications Standards Association, China Mobile and Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co (華為) are also 3GPP members.
China Mobile is encouraging users to transfer to 3G and 4G technologies, which is expected to stimulate demand and could be a boon to Taiwanese firms, Xi said.
China Mobile has 800 million subscribers, but many still use 2G technology, he added.
This year, the company aims to build 700,000 4G LTE base stations and to source 200 million handsets, half of which are to be 4G, Xi said.
Separately, on the sidelines of the workshop, Sercomm Corp (中磊), which makes telecommunications equipment including low-powered radio access nodes, or so-called small cells, urged the National Communications Commission to allot a proper spectrum for TDD technology.
The nation focuses excessively on FDD technology — with 90 percent of the spectrum for the technology — which is imbalanced when compared with the global ratio of 70 percent for FDD and 30 percent for TDD, Sercomm chief executive James Wang (王煒) said.
The disproportion between FDD and TDD spectrum could jeopardize Taiwan’s development in 5G technology, Wang said.
To cope with fast-growing demand for bandwidth, it is becoming a global trend to converge TDD and FDD technologies, Wang said, adding that the convergence is expected to extend into 5G technology.
If Taiwan wants to build a foothold in the 5G market, the commission must speed up releasing more spectrum for TDD technology, Wang said.
“We cannot do R&D in a country without [TDD] spectrum,” Wang said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts