Byron Chang knows exactly why he spent four days manning a booth at CeBIT Asia, and it's got nothing to do with international markets or prestigious trade shows. "The reason why we're here is the local market," said the sales manager for Taiwanese electronics vendor ArtDio Co (金葉科技).
Despite the low foreign exhibitor and visitor turnout, Chang and hundreds of other Taiwanese sales representatives don't seem to mind too much. They've been plugging away at the China market for years. Two-thirds of the exhibitors are from the "greater China" region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. At least 75 percent of visitors -- mostly looking to source goods -- are from Shanghai or other parts of China.
"Business for me is okay, but others are saying it's pretty slow," Chang said.
PHOTO: AP
ArtDio went to the show to find buyers and distributors for its range of CD and MP3 players, the end market being China and not the dozens of other potential markets the company could chase. The comparison between CeBIT Asia and Taipei's Computex is inevitable.
"Taiwan is the IT hub, so of course foreign buyers visit Computex," Chang said.
But at the Shanghai show, there's no confusion about who they're targeting.
"For us its about public relations," said Bill Lu, a sales manager for Taiwan communications equipment maker DBTel Inc (大霸電子).
"Because our brand is not strong here, we want to build up our image here," he said.
Despite a host of advantages, Lu said that Taiwanese are also at some disadvantage.
"In building brands, Taiwanese are worse than Western companies -- but when it comes to cutting costs, they are the best," said Lu, a native Chinese.
"I have gained a lot of management wisdom from the Taiwanese," he said.
"The Taiwanese management system is better suited for us than Western management systems -- Taiwanese know how to deal with the tricky problems."
"Taiwanese are better versed in information-technology systems than the Chinese," said ArtDio's Chang.
The superiority of Taiwanese technology and management, however, is overshadowed by the general dislike that those from Shanghai have for Taiwanese.
"They don't like Taiwanese people much," he said. People from Shanghai often have an image of Taiwanese businessmen as being stingy and arrogant.
"Taiwanese have created an image of being rich -- they go and spend 200 yuan a day on cigarettes. Most Chinese can't afford that," he said.
Taiwanese are also at the bottom rung of companies that Chinese want to work for, because the pay is among the lowest and working hours are often the longest.
"In our eyes, Taiwanese are stingy and low-class," said Diane Yi, a 24-year-old Shanghai woman who left a Taiwan company after two years to work for a German employer.
"They like KTV and chasing women -- but we also admit that they are hard-working," she said.
Ken Lee, sales manager for Taiwan's CPU cooling specialist Cooler Master Ltd (
"The Taiwanese are very different from Hong Kong businessmen," he said.
Lee is a native of Hong Kong
"They take the time to train staff. Their vision is longer than in Hong Kong," he said.
Despite a lack of new or innovative products, the Taiwanese companies at the show are still confident of getting a return on their investment.
"The China market is still very attractive to us, so of course we will keep coming here," said DBTel's Lu.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS