Taiwan's electronics industry continues buoyant growth

At the invitation of the Taiwanese government, the assistant editor of What’s New in Electronics, Elizabeth Latham, joined a party of international journalists to visit factories where some of the latest technical advances were being made by some of the companies in this highly developed industry. Here is what she found:

I was invited to visit Taiwan by TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Development Council) for a pre-Taitronics tour of a range of companies who would be exhibiting at the show. All the companies reported good sales and were optimistic of the future both in terms of revenue and developing technology.

Taitronics claims to be Taiwan’s largest electronics trade show and takes place in October. The companies exhibiting at the show cover a range of industries including: passive components; active components; flexible electronics; cells, batteries and power supplies; LED components and applications; meters and instruments; industrial process and manufacturing equipment; wires and cables; RFID; safety and security; consumer electronics; and other electronic components and parts.

The Taiwanese electronics industry has continued its buoyant progress despite the world still faltering in its economic recovery from the global financial meltdown of two years ago - the Industrial Economic and Knowledge Centre of the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute has predicted Taiwan’s electronic component industry output value to grow 24% from last year.

My most overwhelming impression from the tour was just how much money these high-tech companies set aside for research and development (R&D) compared with, for example, Australia.

Much of this money comes from the Taiwanese government and through organisations such as TAITRA. Companies are encouraged to spend on R&D because they know that if they don’t, they will lose their edge as exporters of high-tech products to world markets Â…

Government support

Founded to help promote foreign trade, TAITRA is a non-profit trade promotion organisation. Funded by the government, industry associations and several commercial organisations, it assists Taiwanese businesses and manufacturers with reinforcing international competitiveness.

As the majority of industries in Taiwan are small and medium-sized enterprises with limited resources for R&D, the government plays an important role in integrating resources and charting a course for the country’s science and technology development.

The National Science Council (NSC) is the main government department responsible for promoting overall science and technology development by setting national science and technology policies, funding academic research, improving the research environment, developing the science parks as well as recruiting and training personnel.

A white paper on science and technology (2007-2010) released by the NSC details commitments by the government to raise R&D spending to 3% of gross domestic product, to increase the number of researchers, lift academic standards at local universities, establish world-class research centres and maintain Taiwan’s status as a top recipient of US patents.

Supported by the government, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, National Applied Research Laboratories and Institute for Information Industry all play important roles in the nation’s science and technology progress by conducting basic and applied research, supporting the science parks, aiding the private sector with R&D and exploring cutting-edge technologies.

The government not only supports those institutes and laboratories but also works with companies. For example, when we visited Mintron, we were told that the company provides the cameras but the government provides the technology that Mintron integrates.

Research and development

When we visited Getac, it shocked us when an employee jumped on a product and threw it into the water feature outside.

Getac, the third largest computing group in Taiwan with about AU$20 billion revenue in 2008, was founded in 1989 as a joint venture between MiTAC Inc. and GE Aerospace.

Its main business falls into two categories: ruggedised computing solutions and plastic and metal components. The company says it has made several technology breakthroughs over the last two decades, including sunlight-readable panels and power-saving devices.

The company offers various degrees of rugged computing products including notebooks, tablets and handhelds and includes the B300 laptop that features 24-hour battery life.

Planning is underway to create solar power to charge laptops and while, at the moment, the technology is not good enough to use, the company is optimistic that with further research it will be possible.

Another company that focuses on in-house research and development is Champtek. Founded in 1985, it originally made peripheral computer products such as mouses and joysticks but now has moved into the auto-ID industry, highlighting the design, manufacturing and sales of bar codes and data transcribing machines and developing RFID technology.

With an in-house research and development team for hardware and firmware design, a service centre and a production site, Champtek has worked with system integrators for government projects in Taiwan and mainland China for many years.

In 2002, the company established ActiveWave - an RFID research and development centre in the US - and has been working on RFID hardware design and manufacturing since then.

Good Will also started in one field and quickly expanded into many more - originally a manufacturer of power supplies, later moving into the development of high-precision electronic test and measurement instruments.

Claiming to be the first professional manufacturer in Taiwan specialising in electrical test and measurement instruments, Good Will currently has more than 300 products available ranging from oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, signal generators to video surveillance systems. Good Will has also seen its presence grow internationally. With headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan GW Instek has subsidiaries in Mainland China, America, Japan, Korea and Malaysia; its products are sold to more than 80 countries worldwide.

As the largest manufacturer and developer of test and measure equipment, it has a different take on R&D which the company calls ‘customer-focused’ innovation, where the aim is to try to anticipate user needs so that when one of them introduces a new product Good Will is ready to test it.

The Electronics Testing Center, Taiwan (ETC) is a not-for-profit organisation that concentrates on inspection and certification institute services and develops quality control and inspection techniques.

In 1983, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industrial Research Institute, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturer’s Association and other public enterprises collectively promoted the establishment of the ETC.

Today the organisation is supported by the Bureau of Standards, Metrology & Inspection and the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

For many years ETC has been involved in researching and developing, inspecting and testing techniques and now provides a range of services for basic electronic components, AV products, electrical appliances, communications, information technology products, medical equipment and industrial electronics products.

To ensure compliance with government’s policies, ETC has been accredited as a certification body to provide products certification on telecommunications terminal equipment and electric/electronic products. It also has the capability for calibrating instruments and provides the services for inspection/testing instruments while gradually moving towards various specialised fields, such as environmental protection, industrial hygiene and safety and evaluation, and consultation for patent infringement analysis.

The organisation has cooperated with the Communication Research Labs of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to research and develop antenna and key components and now provides this design service to the wireless communications industry.

ITRI, one of the organisations that promoted the establishment of ETC, is also a government-sponsored, not-for-profit R&D organisation. It was founded in 1973 as a result of the merger of three research organisations of the Ministry of Economic Affairs: Union Industrial Research Laboratories, Mining Research & Service Organisation, and Metal Industrial Research Institute.

The institute currently focuses on applied research and industrial services. It aims to:

• develop an RFID global test and conformance certification capabilities and innovative applications;

• integrate the identification, sensing, video surveillance and wireless network technology, to develop the next generation of campus security systems.

ITRI applies for some five patents a day, which was made obvious when during our tour we viewed some of the projects they are working on, ranging from solar power-collecting windows, wallpaper-like speakers and interactive ‘paintings’.

This came about because when a company employee was in hospital he became bored looking at the same picture. This led to an interactive horse on a mountain painting being developed. As it senses a person is near, the ‘painting’ animates, the horse runs down the mountain and joins a group of horses, the weather changes and the watcher can clap to make the horses jump onto their hind legs.

ITRI demonstrated a wide range of RFID projects they’ve worked on including: miniature passive RFID reader modules; RFID iBooth System (Wi-Fi version); UHF RFID based intelligent manufacturing and tracking system; visitor multimodal access control and management system; intelligent distributed video surveillance smart front-end system (S-box).

Market trends

A lot of the companies we visited on the tour were moving into (or already are in) the RFID market. GIGA_TMS is one company taking advantage of this evolving technology with a larger antenna to achieve a 1.5 m transmitter/receiver range rather than the industry standard of 90 cm.

GIGA was established in 1987 as a magnetic technology products manufacturer. Ten years later, its CEO became aware of RFID and, seeing its potential, dedicated a research and development group solely for RFID. Twenty-one years later and the company focuses on a wide range of equipment for factory automation and logistics control, retail, parking, food courts, time and attendance, transport, access control security and student attendance.

An example of the advanced technology was shown to us at Champtek, when staff met us at the door with name tags. As we entered the boardroom our names appeared on the screen at the front of the room one by one. If someone left the room we could see they had left, not just because you could physically see them walk out but because their name disappeared from the list on the screen.

Champtek also pointed out that while current tags have no memory the next tag released will have 8 KB of memory.

This technology could be used by companies to monitor what time workers arrive, for schools to monitor when students arrive, to track assets, to monitor guiding systems and to control access.

Champtek entered the RFID market in 2002 and is focusing on 433 MHz active RFID reader and tag hardware manufacturing and firmware design, claiming that the 2.4 GHz frequency is too crowded. The company works with system integrators and solution providers to solve users’ problems, aiming to make the management easier and smarter.

Later this year, Champtek plans to release a 433 MHz active RFID mobile reader with a Bluetooth interface and a reading coverage of up to 60 m.

Another company that has moved to provide memory is Favite. More and more applications need to use large-memory-size tag ICs to store more data, so the company has developed a UHF RFID tag IC with 64/128 Kbits EEPROM. This tag IC is claimed to be the same die size as other tag ICs but with more memory.

Founded in 2000, some of the steps it has taken to position itself as the best UHF RFID hardware company for worldwide system integrators include:

• Establishing a mass production line of tag products including plated antennas, in-lays in flip-chip bonding and various labels and cards;

• Developing a tag antenna copper plating production process that can replace copper etching and dramatically reduce the cost of antenna tags;

• Using its own resources to design and manufacture an IC bonding machine.

In 2009, the company launched an eight-port smart RFID reader based on the Impinj R2000 reader chipset, which is compliant with the EPC C1 Gen2 standard and supports dense reader mode. Later this year, Favite will launch what it claims is the smallest handheld reader based on Impinj chipset with a 7 m read range.

Another trend I noticed is a high accent on vehicle safety with Mintron discussing technology that is currently being used by Luxogen, a Taiwanese car maker.

A future primary application of Mintron’s cameras is fleet management: in 2008, it launched the imaged-based active vehicle safety systems integrated with its cameras. The warning systems include front and side collision, lane departure, blind spot and parking assist.

It pointed out that having a physical monitor in the car could be a safety risk for the driver so it has developed an audio advanced vehicle safety (AVS) mirror. The AVS mirror has three cameras in the mirror and the parameters can be changed by using the mirror. If the driver is using the in-vehicle device there is the option of using sound that can take the place of the display while driving.

The warning system can be displayed in-vehicle or as part of a management system for fleet management.

Security was also another area that seems to have attracted a lot of recent growth - Instek Digital is currently working on digital video recorder (DVR) and network video recorder (NVR) systems, hybrid DVR systems, video management software and external units.

It has experience on a range of projects worldwide including the Taipei MRT Metro System, Sofia International Airport in Bulgaria, Dubai Shopping Mall in UAE and the Motor City Casino in Michigan, US.

Soyal produces RFID solution proximities and smart cards, controllers and many other security devices including room control systems and readers, many of which are used in public transport and in convenience stores.

Mifare is a highlight of the company’s products. It is a contactless memory card operating at 13.56 MHz. It provides a 32-bit serial number of each card and if it is operated at short range maintains accuracy in transit and cashless vending machines.

Its applications include ID cards, loyalty programs and medical information cards and up to 16 separate applications can be managed on one card.

Although reluctant to talk about economics, the company claims a 70% market share with eight distributors in Oceania.

Worldwide reach

The companies all boasted a strong worldwide reach with offices and partnerships across a range of continents. Most had ties with Australia underlining their strong focus on export. Being so involved with export, the companies need to comply with international standards.

GIGA_TMS adapts its products to comply with local regulations. France, for example, has strict privacy laws so the fingerprint access control system GIGA has provided for its French users has been adapted to ensure information of each user is not stored in the system. The user’s fingerprint is stored only on the access card and then the card and fingerprint are scanned by the system to make sure they match.

Getac also ensures its products meet international testing criteria, such as MIL-STD 810G, IP ratings (IP54, IP65, IP67) and 461E. The company also seeks out international projects and recently won a contract to work with Australian ambulances.

With an increasing demand for certification of product and various management systems internationally, ETC is another organisation that has sought out international cooperation and established certification processes through certification bodies in many countries. To ensure customer service, ETC works in collaboration with foreign certification bodies to advance testing technology and meet the demands of the times.

ETC has been accredited by NCC as a Telecommunication Terminal Equipment Certification Organization and is also capable of international testing, such as FCC/USA, IC/Canada, Reg Tp/Germany, BABT/UK, TBR ETSI/Europe and JATE, TELEC/Japan with the goal to assist Taiwan manufacturers to gain foreign certifications.

ETC is the only lab in Asia and one of three labs in the world to perform USB2.0/1394a/SATA/VESA DP C&C Verification and testing.

Champtek has offices in Europe, China and the US, while ITRI has overseas offices in the US, Japan, Russia and Germany that can work with prospective technology partners to find the best ways to proceed and to contact the right company in Taiwan.

Finally, the show that brought me to Taiwan

Taitronics is a B2B trade show for specialised electronic components, LED, test and measurement, electronic manufacturing and processing equipment in Taiwan. It is co-organised by TAITRA and TEEMA and will take place at TWTC Nangang Exhibition Hall from 11-14 October 2010.

Taiwan RFID and Broadband Taiwan will run concurrently with Taitronics. This trio of events will highlight Taiwan’s strength in the electronics industry in terms of research and development manufacturing and logistics.

In 2010, Taitronics will feature 11 show categories as well as a series of seminars that will address online marketing opportunities, safety and security, green electronics, and broadband networks.

For more information on Taitronics, Taiwan RFID, and Broadband Taiwan, please visit the website at www.taitronics.org.