VIA Technologies Inc (威盛) and other Taiwanese computer firms dominated the CeBIT Asia 2001 technology exhibition, as a slump in the global phone industry kept European and US companies away.
Nearly a third of the 521 companies that showed off their latest products and services at the Shanghai show were from Taiwan, underscoring the importance of China's market of 1.3 billion people to Taiwan's computer industry.
"Taiwan is Asia's most active hub for the information technology industry," said Lin Shufen, a spokesman of Sunnytech Information Co, which makes equipment for linking computers together in a network
"That is why you see so many Taiwan exhibitors here."
With global sales of computers and cellular phones dropping, Nokia Oyj, Ericsson AB and Motorola Inc were absent from the show. Instead, Chinese companies such as ZTE Corp made up a fifth of all exhibitors, pitching their latest cellphones at customers as they aim to end the dominance of foreign phones in Asia's largest cellphone market.
This was the first time the Hannover, Germany-based CeBIT computer industry trade show was held in Asia. Organized by Deutsche Messe AG Hannover and the Chinese government's Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the four-day show was an attempt to replace Taiwan's Computex show as the premier technology-related exhibition in Asia, organizers said.
The Hannover CeBIT attracts as many as 8,000 exhibitors every year, with 780,000 visitors a day during the show. Organizers declined to say how many people attended the Shanghai show.
At the June Computex show in Taipei, 1,070 exhibitors turned up from 14 countries, with more than 23,000 technology buyers attending from computer firms in the US, Japan and South Korea.
Companies such as Via, Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc unveiled new products during the show.
In Shanghai, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co was the only company to debut a new product, showing off a postage-stamp sized digital memory card that can store up to 256 megabytes of data for digital cameras, laptop computers and small video equipment.
"Besides pictures and music, customers can store and play movies using our new card," said Masami Ogawa, a spokesman of Matsushita Electric.
"When wireless application services become as popular as mobile phone services, we will have a new business opportunity."
Attendance was slowed by a week of storms and flash floods.
"We were told to check out the show on the first day, but we just could not make it until the last day," said Chen Wei, a technology officer at Shanghai Shangling Electric Appliances Co.
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