Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said on Jan. 28 that Taiwan is one of the top five markets for its app store by revenue.

“It was not a surprise to see three Asian markets in the top-five list given the high smartphone penetration rates in these countries, which in turn leads to strong demand for mobile games,” said Chris Yerga, vice president of engineering and head of Google Play in Asia Pacific. “The top five Google Play markets are in Asia – Taiwan, Japan and South Korea – and the United States also was part of that group.”

Yerga, however, did not elaborate the fifth market or give the specific rankings of the top five, saying only that the figures were not for public consumption.

Google Play, originally the Android Market, is a digital distribution platform operated by Google. It also serves as the official app store for the Android system on mobile devices, that users are able to browse, download, and purchase specific applications developed with the Android SDK and published through Google.

Google Play has more than one million free and paying apps and over 50 billion downloads today, while it was launched as the official app store for Google’s Android operating system in 2012. Google Play offered music, games, magazines, books, movies and television programs. Google Play’s game services received 100 million new users between January and June last year, making it the fastest-growing mobile gaming network of all time.

A poll by the Institute for Information Industry which was released last December revealed that 13.55 million Taiwanese users aged over 12 had a smartphone during the last six months last year, representing 65.4% of Taiwan’s 12 and over population. That was up from a smartphone penetration rate of 58.7% during the first six months last year.

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Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Jan. 9 that Taiwan has been trying to diversify its exports to reduce its reliance on the China market.

“It is a must-do, although close trade relations and connections across the Taiwan Strait are unavoidable,” he said.

Ma made his remarks when he was receiving the awardees for the annual National Distinguished Accomplishment Award and the National Manager Excellence Award at the Presidential Office.

During 2014, he said, the ratio of Taiwan’s exports to China dropped to 39% as the government has been seeking new markets from other countries. In 2000, Approximately 24% of Taiwan’s exports went to China and the figure increased to 40% by the end of 2008, when he took oath of his office for the first term.

The president said that since then, Taiwan has increased its exports to Japan and the U.S. as well as many other countries in the Europe and Southeast Asia.

“We do not want to put all the eggs in one basket,” Ma said. “But, at the same time, we cannot avoid putting any eggs in the biggest basket.”

Meanwhile, China has been the major trading partner of 17 out of its 23 neighbor countries, including Taiwan, Ma said. A close tie, connection and relationship between Taiwan and China is unavoidable, but what Taiwan can do is try to reduce trade dependence on China, the president said.

“Taiwan must transform from an efficiency-driven economy into an innovation-driven one and lower its barriers to foreign trade, so that its economy can be improved,” Ma said. “Many countries are willing to conduct business with Taiwan but will hesitate to sign a bilateral free trade agreement with us or whatsoever because Taiwan does not have official diplomatic relations with them, although they are Taiwan’s major trading partners.”

The government, however, has been making efforts to address these issues so that Taiwan can return to the games against its major competitor for now – Korea, the president said.

The president mentioned that China and Korea are likely to sign a free trade agreement within six months, and he predicted that the new relationship between China and Korea will definitely impact Taiwan’s exports as well as the economy. Ma said that approximately 70% of Taiwan’s exports would overlap with Korea’s, that Taiwan must push for more free trade agreements or so to remain in the competition.

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Rumors that North Korea had a hand in a crippling cyber attack against Sony Entertainment’s (NYSE: SNE) computer network appear to be coming true as new evidence shows that Korean-language code found in the malware’s compiler as well as metadata.

According to reports, investigators from an external organization as well as Sony’s own internal security team have found Korean-language code within the source code of the malware. In addition, the language settings on the computer that compiled the code were Korean. Research firm Alienvault has also discovered that the code was compiled in late November, just days before the attack on Sony took place.

Ron Gula, chief executive officer for Tenable Network Security, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the attack had similar fingerprints to one that targeted South Korean banks and broadcasters in 2013. This attack is credited to a North Korean aligned group called “DarkSeoul”.

According to analysis, it appears that the attackers already had a login for Sony’s network when they delivered their payload.

In the aftermath of the attack, a number of Sony’s unreleased films hit the web. Reports say that Sony’s internal computer network is virtually crippled as well.

A spokesperson for North Korea is quoted in the press as saying that the country had nothing to do with the cyber attack, claiming the regime would “would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy.”

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Here’s a brief roundup of the top business stories in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China for Nov. 25, 2014.

TSMC is the winner of the battle with Samsung regarding Apple’s A9 processor: source

Quoting an anonymous source, Taiwan’s Economic Daily News reported on Nov. 24 that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)(TPE: 2330) has won the competition against Samsung to secure 80% of contract manufacturing order volumes for Apple’s A9 processors.

The source said that Apple favored the stability of TSMC’s 16-nanometer FinFET fabrication technology more than Samsung’s 14-nanometer offering and chose TSMC to supply most of its A9 chips.

The source said that he is expecting 16-nanometer FinFET+ production capacity to reach 50,000 units monthly before the end of June 2015. About 17,000 will be fabricated by retrofitted 20-nanometer production lines, and 33,000 units will be made using new machinery funded by the US$5.6 billion in capital expenditure, which was recently approved by TSMC’s board of directors.

The source said that TSMC is poised to rally its partners in the company’s upcoming supplier conference and forum on Dec. 4, when TSMC Co-CEO Mark Liu (劉德音) is expected to announce the company’s resolve in overtaking the formidable Intel Co. (NASDAQ:INTC), fresh off its victory over the Korean competitor – Samsung.

Foxconn plans more plants for manufacturing iPhone 7’s touch-screen

State-run China Daily reported on Nov. 25 that Foxconn (TPE: 2354) is planning to launch a new factory in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and will use it for manufacturing touch-screens for new iPhones.

Foxconn’s new plan was speculated that the new factory in Henan will also become the base to manufacture transparent body and sapphire screen for the new smartphones. Foxconn produced a total of 96.45 million iPhones and exported 84.46 millions of them in 2013.

Tencent to stream HBO in China

Tencent Holdings (HKG: 0700) said on Nov. 25 that the company has signed a contract with HBO to stream the network’s content in China.

Chinese Internet TV companies have spent more than US$1 billion on foreign content over the last two years in an attempt to draw more viewers but it has been met with increasingly stringent government regulations. The Chinese authorities ordered streaming services in May to take down the popular American shows “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Good Wife,” “NCIS” and “The Practice.” Tencent will not be the exclusive online provider in China for shows featuring much more gore and nudity, such as “Game of Thrones.”

Korea does not trust FTA with China: economist

Taiwan Institute of Economic Research’s Macroeconomic Forecasting Center Director Gordon Sun (孫明德) said on Nov. 25 that Korea may not be as happy as expected as the nation just recently signed its FTA with China.

During a press conference, Sun said that while Taiwan is “quite nervous” about being marginalized by the agreement between China and Korea, Korea, however, also appears to be “not as happy as we imagined” with the agreement because lower duties may not address the challenges Korea’s business is experiencing in China.

Sun said that Korean exports to China recorded zero growth in 2012 and negative growth last year, due to the rise of China’s domestic supply chain, a trend that has hurt sales of Korean producers of components or semi-finished goods, just as it has hurt Taiwanese steel and petrochemical suppliers. The rise of Chinese brand names also adversely affected sales of Korean consumer products, such as smartphones.

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Samsung and Globalfoundries have announced a partnership to collaborate on a global scale to deliver 14nm FinFET technology to their customers. This partnership is different from the already existing Common Platform Alliance which includes Globalfoundries, Samsung and IBM, but is likely a product of that relationship considering that IBM is mostly a research fab and doesn’t really produce many commercial wafers. This 14nm FinFET collaboration is an effort by both companies to build up enough fab capacity in order to satisfy the demand of their customers on this leading-edge technology.

As you can see from the slide above Samsung and Globalfoundries’ partnership means that the two companies are able to deliver both choice, supply, compatibility and to do it all on a global scale with multiple fabs around the world. This 14nm FinFET partnership will cover both 14LPE and 14LPP processes which will allow for multiple products across the board to be manufactured with either Samsung or Globalfoundries’ 14nm FinFET. In the past, Samsung and Globalfoundries talked about how the Common Platform would enable such partnerships to occur and to be honest many didn’t believe that it would be possible, especially with Samsung being so tightlipped at the Common Platform Alliance last year.

According to Globalfoundries and Samsung, their new 14LPE 14nm process will boost performance by 20% while simultaneously delivering a 35% power savings over competitor’s 20nm solutions (clearly targeting TSMC and their 20nm here). They also compare themselves against other FinFET solutions and 20nm solutions, specifically targeting the value proposition of switching to 14nm FinFET indicating a 15% smaller chip with the switch from 20nm Planar to 14nm FinFET.

In terms of the capacity itself and the fabs capable of delivering this capacity, there will be a total of 4 fabs in 3 locations delivering this 14nm capacity to customers. Those come in the form of three Samsung fabs and one Globalfoundries fab. The locations of these fabs are actually in two countries, the US and Korea, even though Globalfoundries does have fabs in Singapore and Germany as well. However, those are not part of Globalfoundries current 14nm plans so they aren’t counted as part of the fab capacity for 14nm.

In addition to the four fabs on two continents, Samsung and Globalfoundries also talked about their expectations for 14nm FinFEt with the Design In phase already ready and a ramp of the process expected to occur by the end of 2014. They have already qualified the 14LPE process back in February and have already released the 14LPE and 14LPP PDK along with all of the libraries and IP design kits. Essentially, now is the finalization phase of various processes with certain chip designs with mass production occuring by the end of this year. What this could mean is that some of TSMC’s customers building for their 20nm process could see themselves leapfrogged by this new Samsung and Globalfoundries 14nm collaboration, especially if they can deliver enough volume to the customers that matter. Obviously, we probably won’t be seeing any 14nm products this year, but a Q1 release wouldn’t be out of the question, which could mean that we may end up seeing some products in time for MWC.

Samsung and Globalfoundries have quietly been working together to steal customers from TSMC, their biggest competitor, meanwhile Intel has been chugging away at their own 14nm process trying to maintain their foundry leadership. If Samsung and TSMC are able to deliver 14nm early enough and to fill their capacity, they could give their customers an advantage that many of them have been hoping for. Parity with Intel’s own processes. While it remains to be seen who will be utilizing Samsung and Globalfoundries 14nm processes we have already been hearing some murmurings about some large semiconductor companies exploring this new collaboration’s 14nm process. It will be interesting to see how chips built on this 14nm FinFET process will compete against Intel’s 14nm process as well as how TSMC will answer today’s announcement considering that their 20nm appears to be having some problems with some partners. We do know that there’s a good chance that a lot of TSMC’s 20nm will be occupied by Qualcomm and their new chips, but I have a feeling that 20nm will be a fairly shortlived node.

Samsung and Globalfoundries have also created a video that talks about this 14nm FinFET partnership and what it means to the companies, their partners, and the industry as a whole.

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