Taiwan Technology at CeBIT Hannover: The 2011 Round-Up !
|
|
 |
Dear Readers,
Every year around the end of January, there are mighty preparations in Taiwan for the two most important events in the calendars of this island nation:
The first, of course, is Chinese New Year, the highest festive celebration in the Chinese lunar alendar. And, as a close second priority, the final preparations of Taiwan's ICT industry to successfully survive CeBIT Hannover, the world's most important market place in the Chinese business calendar.
This year is no exemption. All sectors of the trade are well represented at CeBIT 2011, either by TAIWAN PAVILIONS, or by Taiwan's industrial giants on their plush individual stands, with all topics present:
MULTIMEDIA including Multimedia Networking and HDMI products, PCs and PERIPHERALS with all sub-divisions across the board including POS products, SUBSYSTEM and PARTS, INUSTRIAL PCs, COMMUNICATIONS and NETWORKING, TELECOMMUNICATION and SATELLITE COMMUNICATION.
As you know ( or should know ) the venerable CeBIT Hannover has undergone a complete refurbishing in the face of changing industry demands and changing information habits mainly due to the impact of competing new media which all gnaw into the once well preserved old fashioned system of doing business : Slapping hardware on shelves, then sitting back, waiting for buyers to come and money to change hands. Fortunately, for the new CeBIT this world's biggest fairground permitted the subdivision of the now informative-oriented CeBIT into four separate vertically arranged categories: CeBIT pro, CeBIT gov , CeBIT life and CeBIT lab. (Please consult the organizer's website www.cebit.com for their respective nomenclatures and detailed sub-subdivisions including guidance, directing customers to what they need without detours and disturbing outsiders ) By the way, most Taiwan exhibitors belong to CeBIT pro.
-
Telematics & Navigation (GPS, tracking systems ) will have, at present headcount, 10 providers at Hall 7, including ARKNAV, ATRACK, and GLOBALSAT.
-
Data Capture, RFID related: five exhibitors at Hall 7, SHIN CHUAN, GIGA-TMS, RAYEE, RIOTECH and BITATEK.
-
Business Communications & Networks: Over 50 exhibitors, including such names as DrayTek, Zyxel Communications, Planet Technology, Leadtek, King Slide , and as UPS providers POWERCOM and CENTRALION at Hall 12/13.
Then, there are over 100 exhibitors at Halls 14-17.
-
POS products providers will gather at Hall 16 including AdvanPOS, Firich, Flytek, Fametek, and Protech.
-
PCs and Subsystems: Asus, GIGABYTE, Elitegroup (ECS), MSI and Shuttle at Hall 17 .
-
PC Peripheral providers like A4 TECH, Chenbro Micom, Thermaltake, SYSGRATION, ULTMOST, KYE (Genius), G.Skill, Cooler Master, GeIL, OCZ, FSP
Background
Taiwan, unchanged, is the most significant player in the global ICT industry, with a well-established production pipeline, strong R & D capability and experienced engineers. Taiwan manufacturers provide around 99% of the world's motherboards, 93% of the world's cable modems, 77% of the world's LCD monitors, and 70% of the world's PDAs, either on the island or in offshore factories, mainly in China. Briefly, in a total of 10 ICT major product categories Taiwan is No. 1 in the world.
After the trepidations of the recent economic slump due to the international banking crisis, cautious optimism is the parole for 2011 among Taiwan's opinion leaders, typically spearheaded by CeBIT's long time exhibitor Gigabyte, quoted by Taiwan newspapers as expecting 2011 shipments to increase between 20 – 50 percent and to shortly introduce up to 7 new notebook models. Keep your eyes peeled for them at CeBIT !
More of Taiwan's bigger ICT companies are moving up or planning to move up the global supply chain by building their own brands. Taiwan companies today account for more than three-quarters of the world's production of PCs and notebooks and half of the world's liquid-crystal displays. In addition, Taiwan makes about a quarter of the world's semiconductors and about a fifth of the world's mobile phones.
The close proximity of electronics companies on this small island has led to the formation of industrial clusters that offer clear cost and time-to-market advantages, making Taiwan ever more an excellent one-stop shop for procurement, design support and rapid commercialization of product ideas.
The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), a renowned British think tank, recently announced the results of a global study of IT industry competitiveness, where Taiwan's IT industry rose to second place from sixth place in the previous year out of a total of 66 nations included in the study. The report noted that the country's rise in the rankings is owed mainly to its strong performance in R&D.
Thus, Taiwan is home to a complete industry chain encompassing upstream parts and components, midstream OEM assembly and downstream brand marketing. As such, Taiwan is able to provide a complete one-stop product supply chain for the OEM assembly of upstream parts and components. Besides that, after a successful transition from OEM to ODM, Taiwan is currently making great progress in evolving itself and entering into the era of “OBM”, that is Original Brand manufacturing.
And now for something completely different:
What will be the future role of Taiwan at CeBIT?
CeBIT, Hannover, for several years since the peak hardware boom of the early 2000s, is in the constant process of re-organizing and adjusting to new ideas of how to conduct business, to communicate and to meet in the face of new media and social networks enabling people to contact each other without the necessity to meet in person. If CeBIT would not aspire to adjust, it would have joined 40 other organizers of ICT shows that closed down worldwide during the last two-and-a-half years. These adjustments require emphasis on topics where Taiwan at the moment is not dominating, not even proficient - - but in a few years time certainly will be.
It took more than 100 years to develop aviation into what it is today, and 125 years for automobiles to achieve today's significance, and more years for shipping or manufacturing technologies and many other trades.
In contrast to the above, never in the history of mankind has their been a field of technology like ICT that developed itself out of the blue in just a few years time. And which still leaps forward with big paces in short intervals with technical innovations and their impact on all aspects of our lives - - more often than not unimaginable only two or three years ago! To keep up with that as an ICT event organizer takes conceptual steadfastness, especially when facing the usual malice of many self-styled “analysts” or the critics of pulp writers who in their whole business life have never lifted anything heavier than a pencil - - let alone taking the financial responsibility of running a business of that magnitude.
The same counts for Taiwan's ICT sector, which until recently saw its major role as the world's hardware blacksmith, knocking together the components for the business ideas of western lifestyle high-flyers and are now warned by its authorities that this cannot be the end of all ideas. The trends to a transition are noticeable but will take time. In the opinion of this observer of 34 years presence on the island, the nation will be able to start demonstrating the transition into new progressive fields of ICT products and services about the time when CeBIT will have successfully established its new identity. And as our valued reader and visitor to our TAIWAN PAVILIONS, you have the privilege to witness it, step-by-step !
See you soon for Taiwan at CeBIT : Goodbye and Good Buy !
Yours truly,
|
Quick
Search
