Advantech Co (研華), the world’s biggest maker of industrial computers, expects increasing industrial automation demand from China to boost its industrial Internet of Things (IoT) business revenue in the region by a double-digit percentage next year, extending this year’s growth momentum.
China’s fast-growing electronics and automotive sectors are fueling demand for robots and automation as Chinese manufacturers battle rising labor costs, Advantech industrial IoT group vice president Allan Tsay (蔡奇男) told reporters on the sidelines of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show at Taipei’s Nangang Exhibition Center, Hall 1.
Chinese manufacturers’ latest push for “intelligent” factories is driving demand for industrial Internet of Things solutions, Tsay said.
Rising demand from Chinese firms in Apple Inc’s supply chain to automate production lines ahead of the launch of Apple’s new iPhones has also boosted orders, he added.
Automation deployment in China helped boost Advantech’s industrial IoT revenue in the region by more than 10 percent annually in the first half of this year, Tsay said.
The growth momentum will carry into the second half and is expected to strengthen next year as local Chinese governments aim to roll out more “smart” city projects, especially intelligent rail systems, he added.
“Smart cities will be the next leg of growth, following intelligent manufacturing,” Tsay said.
Increasing uptake of wireless technologies such as narrow-band Internet of Things and long-range wide area networks facilitate the deployment of smart cities because of broader Internet coverage, he added.
Advantech offers a total solution for industrial automation, including hardware and software for data collection and big data analysis, he added.
A new cloud-enabled platform, dubbed WISE-PaaS, will allow customers to monitor and manage production lines from a remote “war room,” Advantech said.
By offering tailor-made services for diverse sectors, Advantech expects the number of its WISE-PaaS partners to rise to 400 within the next three years, compared with the current 57, Tsay said.
WISE-PaaS can be adapted for factory environment surveillance, such as monitoring energy consumption, wastewater or air pollution at different facilities, he said.
Advantech reported revenue of NT$3.82 billion (US$127.07 million) for last month, up 11.17 percent monthly and 6.8 percent annually. Cumulative revenue in the first eight months totaled NT$28.68 billion, up 3.7 percent annually.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS