Dec. 04, 2000

The worldwide bursting of the Internet business bubble has not only overthrown all pretensions of thousands of dot-com companies, but also knocked out development plans of the global market for information appliances (IA).

According to an internal estimated by Acer Inc., reported by the Taipei-based Commercial Times, sales of the company's IA sector will only meet at most 70% of it's annual target this year. Other first movers in the IA industry, including Quanta Computer Inc. and First International computer Inc., also have had to make sharp downward adjustments to their shipment targets.

In 1999, IDC had predicted that the IA market would grow by an average annual rate of 70% over the coming five years. Most IA makers now dismiss this prediction as hopelessly optimistic. They say that the future of the IA market is difficult to predict and that IDC is likely to scale back its forecast for this market before long.

Optimists note that IA products put PCs "in the shade" at Comdex Fall/2000. They also say that the favorable responses that IA devices drew were clear dings that IA is a "sunrise industry" that will replace PCs as a focus in the information industry because of the convenient Net applications.

This view has many supporters, but Acer and Quanta say that they are worried that they will face an uphill struggle to develop the IA market, and t hey don't expect success to be just around the corner.