IC design groups lack killer applications this year, and their performance is generally at a historical low. However, with the rise of Smart Handheld Devices and ultrabooks, wireless communication related IC such as WiFi, NFC, SSD, touch panel and other business opportunities will become the new Saviour of IC design industry.

In the past, with the theme of Shanzhai mobile phone, MediaTek swept the world in the 2G mobile phone fundamental frequency market, and its operation reached a peak. However, with the backward layout of 3G chips, its operation has gone down sharply in recent years. However, after the replacement of functional mobile phones by smart phones, low-cost smart phones or smart phone like chips have become a new battlefield for Taiwan mobile phone chip manufacturers.

Mt6573, the 3.75g smart phone chip of MediaTek, is gradually showing success in the mainland market. In addition to being adopted by Lenovo A60, mt6575, a successor product, will be launched next year. It is said that Huawei will adopt this IC. In addition, MediaTek's smart phone chips are also adopted by Vodafone .

Due to the cooperation between MediaTek and Lenovo, the sales of smart phone A60 in the mainland market has achieved good results, and the number of 3G mobile phone chip customers has reached 2 digits, MediaTek will continue to seize the business opportunities in emerging markets in the future. Morningstar is also optimistic about the business opportunities of 2G mobile phones in emerging markets. In the third quarter of this year, it has launched a new revised smart phone chip 8536n, which is one of the options for China's white brand mobile phones to enter the emerging markets. It is also said that Morningstar will launch 2.75g and 3.75g smart phone chips before the end of the year, which have the opportunity to enter the Nokia supply chain.

In addition to mobile phone chips, WiFi and NFC derived from smart handheld devices are also the focus of IC design industry. According to the research institute Garter (Gu Neng), the future application field of WiFi chip will expand to personal cloud, intelligent networking and other new applications. It is estimated that the demand in 2015 will grow from 800 million last year to 3 billion. And it is worth noting that after 2013, 802.11ac specification will become the new mainstream of WiFi application in PC field, and will be further extended to mobile phones, tablet computers, etc. in addition to Ruiyu, MediaTek will also benefit from the merger of leiling in the future.

As for NFC, liwang, a domestic IC design and service company, has already made a layout in silicon smart finance. With the trend of gradually building smart phones in e-wallet, its contribution to operation will gradually show up. In addition, ultrabook is expected to take off next year, and memory control IC Cluster and module manufacturers will have the opportunity to benefit from SSD business opportunities. As for touch applications, there are also imaginative themes, including Horia and Yili.