NEC Corp plans to increase the amount of mobile phones, PDAs and notebook computers it purchases from Taiwan by 10 percent this year to NT$61 billion (US$1.8 billion), the president of Japan's largest computer manufacturer said yesterday.
Most of the orders will be for communications equipment and desktop-PC components, such as TFT-LCD panels, NEC Taiwan officials said.
The China External Trade Development Council, a government-sponsored organization, brought together 277 Taiwanese companies for a two-day meeting with NEC executives last month.
"With the NEC project, we had 19 companies [separate companies within NEC] requiring bids on 650 various types of products," Wu Cheng-tien (
Mobile phones, semiconductor equipment and computer components will now, as a result of the meeting, be sourced by NEC from local manufacturers.
Fujitsu Ltd, a Japanese electronics giant, also announced plans earlier this year to purchase some NT$30 billion (US$885 million) in PCs, computer servers and mobile phones from Taiwanese manufacturers this year.
The company also worked with the trade council to finalize a list of companies that eventually met with Fujitsu executives in Taipei. It interviewed over 300 companies in an effort to source 207 products here.
Last year, foreign firms purchased US$37 billion in IT products from Taiwanese manufacturers, two-thirds of which were bought by US-based companies.
Japanese companies, by comparison, only purchased US$4.41 billion in IT products from Taiwan last year, although this was a 22.2 percent increase over the previous year, according of Industrial Development Bureau figures.
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