According to research firm IC Insights, the outlook for microcontrollers continues to strengthen following a sharp recovery in smartcards, gradual improvements in the global economy, and the emergence of new embedded-systems applications, such as wearable electronics and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Nevertheless, these market factors, along with steady growth in automotive and portable electronics, will drive up microcontroller sales by 6 percent in 2015 to a new record-high level of $16.8 billion (NT$529.2 billion) after a 5 percent increase in 2014, according to IC Insights' 2015 edition of The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry.

An Analyst said that IoT will boom the demand of 32-bit MCU with the view that more and more electronic products will support online functionality as well as the signal processing is getting complicated. In industrial electronics, ARM's 32-bit architectures are made of advanced foundry process that are suitable for the low-power consumption electronic products, while the high-power consumption 8-bit MCU will still exist.

According to Holtek, the momentum of the company will come from smoke detector, industrial control, and healthcare. In regard to 32-bit MCU, the company still needs more time to harvest. Haier, Midea, and Gree from China are its customers.

Generalplus aims at developing 32-bit MCU/remote controller, which successfully penetrated the supply chain of big firms in the US and Europe.