Wei Chuan-qian, Senior Analyst at Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) of Institute for Information Industry (III), said that the output of smart factory will reach around $16 .7 billion dollars (NT$500 billion dollars), the annual growth rate is 7.1 percent.

“Though smart factory accounts for 20 percent in automation market, it still has the bright prospect. As to the output of Taiwanese supply chain of smart factory is less than 5 percent, most of which are as components providers,” Wei Chuan-qian added.

Smart factory consists of Integrated Automation System (IAS), intelligent device control systems, robot, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Cloud. Taiwan mainly invested in front end industrial PC, robot, and automatic design and manufacture, less invested in logistics automation management and applied innovation. In other words, Taiwan so far is focused on the hardware more than the software.

On the other hand, Foxconn, Delta Electronics, TECO, Hiwin Technologies Corp., and Airtac International Group have been selected as a constituent stock of Robo Stox ETF, which proves that the Taiwanese robot supply chain has been valued internationally. It's a sign that Taiwan is upgraded to developing robotic technology, not only OEM/ODM.

Lately, Advantech and Hiwin Technologies teamed up in a bid to penetrate the robot market, which made waves in investing in robots. Wei Chuan-qian suggested that Advantech and Hiwin Technologies can also cooperate with Foxconn, Quanta, Compal Electronics, Pegatron, and Wistron these top five electronic equipment manufacturers (OEMs/ODMs) with the view to offer more competitive solutions to customers.