R&D Spotlight: The Taiwan Connection
By John MacWilliams, Bishop & Associates Inc.

R&D funding is not the driving force for the connector industry. Most connector developments are extensions of existing technology and subject to revenue forecasts or customer applications. Connector design activity typically occurs late in the equipment design cycle, demanding shorter development cycles and shorter lead-times to market for connector companies.

Larger connector companies can afford more research, but many have cut back on more basic research activities. Smaller companies and particularly startups cannot be excluded from doing research. In fact, some of the more interesting new ideas come from startups. Sometimes these innovations are adopted by the broader industry, other times they remain niche technologies.

Specific OEMs, standards bodies, and consortia continue to be conduits for many connector developments because they provide market need and a more certain revenue path. System-level R&D activities around the world fuel breakthroughs that eventually impact the connector industry. These R&D activities fall into broad categories: 

  • Basic research, with breakthroughs in EO, nano-technology, super-conductivity, etc.

  • Electronic materials technology

  • New manufacturing technologies such as printed electronics, MEMS, MOEMS, NEMS, etc.

  • IC technology en-mass, including microprocessors, DRAM, flash memory, and wireless

  • Photonics in EOICs and electronic systems beyond telecommunications

  • Display technology such as micro-displays, DLP, LCOS, OLED, 3D

  • New electronic systems and applications. Examples: GPS, smart phones, hybrid vehicles

  • Communications technology such as recent breakthroughs in wireless

Subsets to these developments include:

  • Computerized modeling, simulation, and product design—right down to the connector level

  • Developments in semiconductor and system packaging that impact connectors

  • Developments in passive, electro-mechanical, and fiber optic components

  • Electronics assembly and manufacturing

  • Environmental electronics, including RoHS and REACH regulations

R&D activities that result in major developments are conducted by various organizations:  

  1. Government agencies and laboratories, including SBIR funding to small businesses

  2. Quasi-government/industry organizations, such as ITRI and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

  3. Other independent R&D organizations, such as SRI and Sarnoff

  4. University R&D funded by government (e.g. National Science Foundation, DARPA, NIST)

  5. University R&D funded by industry (typically more focused than NSF funding)

  6. 6.       Industry R&D associations, such as EPRI, Cable Labs, etc.

  7. OEM companies, such as IBM, HP, Siemens, and Microsoft

  8. Component manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, Tyco Electronics, and others

All of this adds up to a lot of R&D. But, one of the things we have learned over the past decade is that most R&D cannot flourish in a vacuum. There is more stringent accounting of R&D funding in the current business climate. R&D must be tied in some concrete fashion to a roadmap; market need and/or financial returns. Having said that, there remains a place for more basic research. This is conducted at a few major companies like IBM or Intel, or at federal labs, federally funded universities, independent research labs, etc.

 Taiwan’s Role in Research
Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) represents one of the more successful industry-government R&D partnerships around the world. ITRI was founded in 1973 when Taiwan was primarily an agrarian economy with fledgling manufacturing industries. ITRI was established from the merger of three research organizations in Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA): Union Industrial Research Laboratories, Mining Research & Service Organization, and Metal Industrial Research Institute.

ITRI undertook its mission to “Accelerate Industrial Technology Development” in Taiwan. It guided traditional industries in upgrading their technology, assisted newly arisen industry establishments in electronics, and cultivated and recruited industrial technology professionals (including expatriates and retirees from corporations such as IBM). ITRI promoted the then-unfamiliar term of Global Competitiveness for Taiwan’s various business enterprises, focusing on becoming an export powerhouse in industries such as electronics.

Taiwan’s strategy and goal was to identify and invest in high-growth technologies, develop business plans to support a large export market, and to become indispensable partners, not competitors, to powerful multinational corporations and other countries.

Among Taiwan’s major accomplishments was the development and hyper-growth in many areas of electronics expertise, including semiconductors, portable/handheld and micro-electronic packaging, opto-electronics, memory modules, and LCD displays.

An adjunct to these strong developments was the creation and establishment of the Original Design Manufacturing concept (ODM). ODM married Taiwan’s developing world-class product design and manufacturing with international OEMs via a new class of Taiwan ODM companies such as Compal, Quanta, FIC, and more recently Hon Hai Industries. Taiwan concentrated on ODM while partnering OEMs focused on marketing and distribution. This has resulted in Taiwan gaining dominant ODM manufacturing positions in products for specific market segments, such as notebook computers, digital cameras, music players, and LCD displays. Given Taiwan’s cultural ties and near-shore proximity to mainland China, it has been able to partner with China’s emerging electronics industry and China’s abundant labor in a major way, retaining huge and growing areas of manufacturing value within Taiwan industry’s umbrella, and being a catalyst for labor-intensive industrial growth in China.

Current areas of ITRI R&D activities include:

  • Wireless broadband

  • All-IP network

  • Wireless sensing network

  • Mobile digital lifestyles

  • Broadband chip design

  • Nano-electronics

  • Flexible electronics and displays

  • Optical storage

  • 3D imaging

  • 3D IC packaging

  • IC optoelectronics

  • LCD displays

Each one of these areas will have significant connector content.

View the ITRI website for detail on these developments

One recent ITRI development won the 2008 R&D 100 Award, along with developments from Intel, Argonne National Labs, and NASA. This development has enabled on-chip AC-LED lighting technology, which will help enable next-generation low power lighting. The chip design eliminates the need for an AC-DC converter in LED lighting applications.

John MacWilliams
Senior Consultant and Analyst, Bishop & Associates Inc.
 John MacWiIliams has been in the electronics industry for over 40 years. His main areas of experience have included: U.S. competitiveness programs, market research studies, authored articles, field sales and management, product marketing management, strategic marketing, new product planning, venture development, advertising and media relations, direct sales, manufacturers representative, distribution sales management, and international marketing. MacWilliams has worked with AMP, Diceon Electronics, TRW, and IRC in marketing management positions. Prior to joining Bishop & Associates, MacWilliams served as the group director of marketing and new product planning for AMP.

 MacWilliams is a graduate of Lehigh University, where he studied business management and engineering.
 
 

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