The wildly popular Pokemon Go phenomenon is expected to catalyze demand for a number of Taiwanese suppliers, despite lingering concerns about the augmented-reality (AR) game’s ability to sustain players’ interest, Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said.
Taiwanese suppliers of mobile phone lenses, cloud computing applications, servers, heat dissipation modules, fast-charge ICs, battery packs and even convenience store chains are projected to benefit from “Pokenomics,” Yuanta analysts said in a recent note.
Largan Precision Co (大立光), a camera lens supplier for smartphones and tablets, is expected to benefit from rising demand, as its products are required for AR applications, along with solid-state image sensors and other optoelectronic modules, Yuanta said.
ASPEED Technology Inc (信驊), which makes chips used in servers supporting cloud computing technology, is likely to benefit from growing demand for cloud computing capacity that powers AR games running on mobile devices.
In May, the company acquired Broadcom Corp’s Emulex Pilot operation for US$30 million.
The acquisition of the US-based remote server management chip designer could bolster ASPEED’s market share, Yuanta said.
In addition, Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱) is expected to see its non-PC revenue rise from its involvement in broadband and router supply chains.
As server load is expected to rise to accommodate the influx of players, increasing demand is expected for server heat dissipation module suppliers such as Chaun-Choung Technology Corp (超眾).
Chaun-Choung has expanded into the smartphone heat dissipation market, which contributed about 8 percent of total sales in the first half of this year following contracts awarded by South Korean handset brands, Yuanta said.
The brokerage added that heat pipes are rapidly becoming a mainstream solution for smartphones.
Players of AR games will inevitably deplete their smartphone batteries during long gaming sessions with wireless broadband and GPS activated, leading to rising demand for external battery packs, particularly makers of fast-charge ICs for external battery packs, such as Silergy Corp (矽力杰) and On-Bright Electronics Inc (昂寶), Yuanta said.
As Pokemon Go forces players outdoors, they are likely to frequent convenience stores, such as President Chain Store Corp’s (統一超商) 7-Eleven chain, Yuanta said, adding that consumption might improve as stores implement tie-in campaigns with the game to attract more players.
However, Yuanta said that Google and Apple Inc’s mobile app store platforms would take the lion’s share of the Pokenomics windfall, as they each receive a 30 percent cut from Pokemon Go’s in-game revenue, followed by Pokemon Go developer Niantic Inc and Nintendo Co Ltd, Yuanta said.
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