Feb. 16, 2001

Procomp Informatics Ltd., one of Taiwan's leading manufacturers of GaAs wafers, will reorganize its personal computer business unit into an independent information appliance (IA) company in order to move into contract production of the appliances. The new company will be names APLUX. It's general manager, W.T. Hsu, was recruited last year from IBM for the the personal computer unit. He is assigned to launch two types of IA products at CeBIT 2001 in Hannover, to solicit OEM-based contracts.

Impressed by Taiwan's strength in IA- gear manufacturing, IBM Taiwan has inked an agreement with Acer Inc. and C P Technology Co. Ltd, to jointly develop IA products, according to Chinese language press reports. Under the deal IBM will be responsible for offering IA solutions, while Acer and C P Technology have been entrusted with the role of turning out the necessary IA products.

Acer is manufacturing the set-top box based on IBM's embedment solution. C P Technology is manufacturing the home gateway it developed. Europe will be the primary market for the gateway.

IBM Taiwan says it expects to cooperate with more local electronics manufacturers to develop new products applied to handheld gadgets such as cell phones, PDAs, Net-access machines, and wireless networking machines.

Electronic books are expected to become another hot IA product in 2001. Local industry experts estimate that a large number of Taiwan manufacturers will bet involved in electronic book production in the second quarter of 2001 and to roll out first samples as early as may.