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.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (better known as Foxconn) ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose 60 places to reach No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc. at 348th, Pegatron Corp. at 461st, CPC Corp., Taiwan at 494th and Wistron Corp. at 496th. According to Fortune, the world’s
DIVERSIFYING: Taiwanese investors are reassessing their preference for US dollar assets and moving toward Europe amid a global shift away from the greenback Taiwanese investors are reassessing their long-held preference for US-dollar assets, shifting their bets to Europe in the latest move by global investors away from the greenback. Taiwanese funds holding European assets have seen an influx of investments recently, pushing their combined value to NT$13.7 billion (US$461 million) as of the end of last month, the highest since 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the first half of this year, Taiwanese investors have also poured NT$14.1 billion into Europe-focused funds based overseas, bringing total assets up to NT$134.8 billion, according to data from the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA),
RSS