Taiwan at CeBIT 2004: The Digital Imaging and PC Pavilions

Dear Reader:

This is the 7th e-paper to prepare you step-by-step for Taiwan's 11 different theme-oriented Pavilions at CeBIT 2004. If you are a first time reader, you may still retrieve the previous six letters: From our home page, click "e-papers" from the left navigation bar and you have the whole archive ( including those I wrote for CeBIT Asia in Shanghai and CeBIT America in New York; so you can still see what you missed and come next time !)

Back to Hannover: The venerable CeBIT Hall 1 is again venue of the Taiwan "Digital Camera, Image Processing and POS-Systems" Pavilion. Want a few exhibitor names to wet your appetite?: Premier Imaging ( the world's biggest camera factory ), DXG, Chicony, Farsharp, and Tekom, among others, will be waiting for you.

Hardly any technology has seen such steep double digit growth rates since its introduction than digital photography and imaging. Taiwan's involvement is high, and rising. Market researchers like iSuppli forecast that the digital still camera market will grow to 52 million units worldwide this year and will reach 65 million units per annum by 2007. Taiwan makers are predicted to produce 40% of the world demand this year and 64% by 2007.

Japanese manufacturers' long-held dominance of the global digital camera market is dwindling under the aussault from Taiwan OEMs and ODMs. Their products are manufactured for and resold under Japanese and U.S. brand names, among them all the household names like Fuji, Minolta, Konica, HPD, Kodak, Casio, Olympus and Ricoh, while the same makers also sell significant numbers of their own branded cameras to U.S. and European distributors. Taiwan's newest advantage is increase depth of production, as three major domestic companies supply CMOS sensors.

However, SLR aficionados, high-end amateurs, professional photographers and journalists must still shop elsewhere. Technologically, digital cameras from Taiwan are targeted to meet the demand level of the consumer mass market, mostly people who can neither taste the olive in a martini unless it bumps their teeth, nor tell the difference between a 2,5 or 5 MegaPixel resolution on a 13 x 18 cm album photo.

CeBIT Hall 2 is the home of PC systems, Notebook and PDA manufacturers. To describe Taiwan's share in this business would mean to bring coal to Cardiff. The ongoing trend to replace desktop PCs with notebooks is a blessing for Taiwan's OEMs and ODMs. Market Intelligence has it that global notebook shipments will grow 27% to 47 million units this year, and that Taiwan manufacturers may grab a share of 65%. Among the major exhibitors in Hall 2 are Clevo, Mitac, FIC, Tatung, Spectec and Uniwill.

And now for something completely different:

The gloomy business mood that prevailed since 2001 has made way for cautious optimism. Analysts outlooks are thumbs-up. Consequently, the present indicators for CeBIT 2004 are encouraging and you should know them in brief:

CeBIT is and will hold its position as the world's biggest trade fair at all. No other event in the world can boast a booking of 300,000 square meters (over 3,229,170 square feet ) of net exhibition space. That's more than the combined total of the seven or eight international ICT fairs in line behind CeBIT. IFA Berlin lags far behind with 78,000 sqm and Systems 2003 in Munich weighed in at only 35,000. Taiwan's space occupation at CeBIT comes close to what they occupy on their home turf COMPUTEX in Taipei.

Space aside, CeBIT is also clearly the leader by the number of exhibitors. The turnout this year is more than the combined total of its seven closest runner-ups. Out of the 6,000-plus total, 2,700 companies from abroad have registered to-date, a domestic-to-foreign ration unsurpassed from any viewpoint.

More Asian exhibitors than ever before are lined up for this year's CeBIT. Participation from Taiwan has topped the 700 mark for the first time, followed suit by 160 from Korea and 140 each from China and Hong Kong. Bigwigs like Panasonic, Samsung and Sanyo increased their stand size considerably.

Visitor particulars: CeBIT 2003 had slightly over 556,000 attendees, of them 112,000 foreign visitors from 100 different countries. As per opinion poll, 393,000 of visiting professionals indicated to be responsible for, or having an advisory role in purchasing decisions, 43% of them said they came with firm intentions to place on-the-spot orders. A shift of qualification away from end users to professionals was noticeable, and it will further increase this year.

57% of all visitors said that they do not attend any other ICT show !

Not to be forgotten: Multi-level events like HANNOVER MESSE and CeBIT are also a "market within the market" ! At CeBIT, The executives among 70,000 staff members of the exhibitors constitute an major market for inter-exhibitor business contacts.

Finally, there are two factors that decidly brought the number of visitors down from previous records, and I mentioned it already in e-paper 4: The technological sensations of yesteryear become the household items of today - - when the myth is gone, so are the rubberneckers, but who will miss them? And then there are those who have become addicted to the Internet drug, including but not limited to couch potatoes with shyness and low self-esteem, obsessed by the new cyberspace opportunities to contact people without having to meet them.

Let us old farts continue to conduct business the old fashioned way, in the market place, face-to-face , with a handshake to clinch a deal!

See you all at CeBIT !

Yours truly, Dieter Neumann U.I.P.R.E. Senior Editor Hannover Pacific Publications Neumann@Taiwan-Technology.com www.Taiwan-Technology.com www.CeBIT.de

And here, some previews from our exhibitors:

		Chicony DV3 New DV Announcement Business goes far beyond money things only, but a partnership way to pursue for win-win. Chicony develops strong, long-lasting alliances with our customers and makes the full array of Chicony's resources available to help them meet their short- and long-term strategic objectives. ......more
		Clevo notebooks with new technology and innovation CLEVO is the professional notebook computer manufacturer for distributors, and is also one of the world's most preferred OEM/ODM partners. We market our products in more than 50 countries, and have established service centers in the USA, Germany, Britain, China, and Taiwan ....more
		AAEON won the Symbol of Excellence Award For The Fifth Year in a Row AAEON continue its technology innovation by winning the 2004 Taiwan "Symbol of Excellence" award for the PD8500 sunlight readable LCD display and AMB-2000-E fanless Panel PC. This year represents AAEON's fifth year in consecutive win in the SOE. The PD8500 is designed to operate in extreme ambient light conditions and produces vivid images with an extremely wide perceived viewing angle....more
		Neptune 1370 is the most powerful PoS PC in the field(Datavan) DataVan has been a leading POS system designer and manufacturer since 1986 with the most updated and innovative products. Preserving the spirit that represents our company, we want to show the new trend in POS systems......more
		TwinMOS announces 2GB 70x Superior High Speed CompactFlash Card TwinMOS, in its continued effort to meet customers' demand for high-capacity and high-speed storage devices, will in the first quarter of 2004 launch the 2GB 70x Superior High Speed CompactFlash Card, making the user's computing experience feel like cruising on a highway......more