Taiwan is expected to manufacture nearly 80 percent of the world's wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment this year, a government-funded research center said yesterday.
"With an increasing number of Western countries outsourcing manufacturing of wireless network interface cards to Taiwan, the nation's global market share of WLAN equipment is expected to jump from 58 percent last year to 80 percent this year," said Vicky Yeh (
WLAN is a data communications system that enables users to connect to the Internet without cables. By using radio-frequency technology, users can get online via notebooks or personal digital assistants without hard-wire connections.
Taiwan shipped some 6 million WLAN cards and transmitters (called access points), generating NT$16.3 billion in sales last year. Production is likely to rise to 13 million cards with a production value of NT$21.67 billion, the institute reported.
WLAN equipment makers D-Link Corp (
"More than 90 percent [of WLAN-related products] are exported to North America and Western Europe," Yeh said.
Mobile-service operators in those areas are upbeat about establishing "hotspots" for WLAN services, she said.
In August, T-Mobile USA, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom linked up with Starbucks Corp in the US to offer WLAN services. Currently Starbucks stores located in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Dallas all offer WLAN-based Internet access. Expansion to Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington is planned by the year's end.
Combined with other service operators, North America is expected to have 20,400 WLAN service hotspots before 2006.
WLAN is heating up in the UK as well, with 4,000 hotspots expected to be online by 2005.
One industry watcher said that the high penetration rate of notebook PCs in Western countries is stimulating demand for interface cards.
"Early last year, major computer makers, such as IBM and HP, began to regard wireless-network-interface cards as a standard component on their notebook PCs," said Simon Hsu (
By 2004, 40 percent of new notebook PCs and PDAs will be equipped with wireless network cards, Hsu said.
Market reaction to all the WLAN hype, however, has not been very impressive, Yeh said.
"Hotspots are hot, but WLAN usage is cold," she said.
On average, one Starbucks outlet is pulling in less than US$10 per day from the service. Compared with the US$600 to US$800 investment to set up a wireless network in a coffee shop, the return is not very encouraging, she said.
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