"For CeBIT 2004, we will double our space requirement!" an ebullient K.Y.Lee, C.E.O of BenQ , told this writer, while receiving him together with Taiwan's de facto ambassador to Germany Dr. Hu Wei-jen,on his already highly impressive two-floor custom designed stand at CeBIT Hannover 2003, praising his business success on this world's biggest ICT trade show.

This reflects the general mood of this former subsidiary of Acer that sold only necessary but unglamorous peripherals such as CD-ROM drives at that time, while now well on the way to an industrial giant, manufacturing an impressive line of ICT products with distinctive designs.

Quite unlike many other Taiwan companies which concentrate on contract manufacturing, OEM oder ODM, BenQ's K.Y. Lee dreams of developing his company's name into a worldwide recognized brand, much the same as Sony today, according to a local press report.

For him, Taiwan has been a technology provider for long, and it should be now high time to build a brand to support a global business. Obviously well ware of the fact, that many tried this before him and failed because of underestimating the cost factor, Lee will use a measured approach, starting at his home base Taiwan and continuing in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Japan.

Financially, BenQ had a net income of US$213 million in revenue of US$3 billion, a 50% increase in revenue over 2001, while this year's figures admittedly will not be quite as impressive due to the unexpected SARS setback this year, with especially bad results in Q2.

In 2000, Lee renamed the company from Acer Peripherals to Acer Communications and Multimedia as a first step to indicate his ambitions to broaden the product line-up. But the real breakthrough started in 2002, when Acer spun off and renamed the group BenQ and started product developments that today include mobile telephones, digital cameras, digital projectors, CD and DVD drives, computer monitors, notebook computers, portable digital music players and handheld computers.

Regarding product diversification, most revenue comes from the display business. Geographically, the company already operates quite global, with revenue ( in falling order ( coming from the U.S., China, Europe and parts of Asia outside Taiwan and China.

However, at present roughly 70% of revenue still comes from sales to buyers who market the products under their own brand.

For the future, BenQ will lay emphasis on fields that it has deemed important for the company's further rise: LCD displays for notebook computers, LCD TVs, DVD drives and cell phones.

To support LCD-related products, BenQ has a potent supplier of displays in Taiwan's LCD panel giant AU Optronics, where BenQ is the largest shareholder and its C.E.O. Lee is the chairman. AU Optronics is building an 6th generation for LCD TV panels, a product that BenQ says will outshine computer displays in three to four years.

In September BenQ had announced in Taipei its plans to set up several LCD TV production bases worldwide. According to Peter Chen, BenQ's president of the company's media business division, in addition to its production facilities in Taiwan. BenQ will set up LCD TV production bases in Malaysia, Suzhou (China), Mexico and Europe, not only because of consumer market proximity, but also to avoid high custom duties on imported finished goods.

At the end September, BenQ introduced its latest 30-inch LCD-TV, while the company said to have begun delivering 13- 15- and 20-inch LCD TV models on a contract production basis in early September and would begin to deliver 26- 28- and 30-inch models in October.

For Europe, the location of the LCD-TV assembly plant is still under consideration.

According to Chen, BenQ is confident to deliver about 300,000 to 400,000 LCD TVs in 2004, compared to an estimated global sales volume of eight million units.