Dec. 24, 2001

Taiwan is forecast to deliver at least five million personal digital assistants (PDAs) next year for some of the biggest names in business.

High Tech Computer Corp., a subsidiary of VIA Technologies Inc. has recently been contracted by Compaq to manufacture PDAs running Microsoft's new Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Asustek Computer Inc. and First International Computer Inc. are scrambling for PDA contracts from NEC Corp.; amd Mitac International Corp. and Compal Electronics Inc. will work with Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba Corp. respectively, to develop Pocket PC 2002-equipped devices. Wistron Corp. expects to continue producing PDAs for Casio Inc. and Acer Inc.

Thanks to the Compaq contracts for its iPAQ PDAs, High Tech expects to ship over two million PDAs this year, with increase to 2.5 million to 3 million units due to expected orders from Toshiba and other big brands.

Toshiba is also reportedly working with Compal on the development of a new type of PDA, which is scheduled to hit the market next year.

First International has long produced notebook computers for NEC and has a strong desire to make Pocket PC PDAs for the Japanese firm.

Asustek also hopes to make PDAs for NEC while intending to roll out is own-brand products.

Taiwan industry experts predict that the rollout of Pocket PC 2002 OS will prompt big firms to introduce new PDAs to replace the older models running WinCE OS.

Late last month, IBM announced the development of a Linux PDA called the Paro MPC PDA, which comes installed with IBM's DB2Everyplace and WebSphere applications running on a Linus OS. IBM claims that the open-source OS will mae it easier for sotware developers to make customized applications for enterprise customers.