Starting in April 2017, third-party payment providers in China will have to put their client reserve funds under centralized management of People’s Bank of China (PBoC). This policy is expected to have a heavy impact on major domestic payment providers including Alibaba and Tencent as it prevents them from using the reserve funds to generate interest income or grow their businesses. According to market research firm TrendForce, the total amount of reserve funds that will transfer from third-party payment providers to the control of the Chinese government is estimated around RMB 500 billion.
AR and VR continue to grab attention worldwide and their uses have expanded into tourism, work, warehousing operations and drones, reports TrendForce from CES 2017. The related demonstrations and announcements made at this year’s event have shown that the AR/VR industry as a whole is shifting its focus from hardware development to expanding applications. TrendForce forecasts that the annual global shipments of VR devices will reach 5.1 million units in 2017 and grow to 8.5 million in 2018. Note that the projected figures exclude mobile VR products.
Mobile payment services have expanded significantly during 2016 as smartphone makers intensify their efforts to build their own payment ecosystems. At the same time, innovations and diversification in mobile payment methods have generated new demand and opportunities worldwide. According to market research firm TrendForce, the scale of the global mobile payment market will reach US$780 billion by the end of 2017, amounting to an annual increase of 25.8%.
TrendForce’s latest market survey finds that VR devices will enjoy strong sales this Christmas season on account that game consoles are also going to be popular gift purchases. Based on TrendForce’s latest analysis, annual shipments of VR devices worldwide (excluding mobile VR device) are projected to reach 2.91 million units for 2016 and grow massively by 75% to 5.1 million units for 2017. In terms of ranking of brands by shipments, Sony is expected to take first place this year, followed by Oculus in second and HTC in third.
Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (abbreviation QCT, here referred to as Qualcomm) tops the projected ranking of the top 10 fabless IC design houses worldwide based on annual revenues for 2016, according to TrendForce’s analysis. Broadcom Limited is expected to be runner-up, while MediaTek will take third place. The ranking positions of these three companies are fairly secure in the short term because collectively they would represent about 65% of the total revenue generated all the design houses that are listed on this year’s top 10 ranking.
