The demand for mobile Internet already exists. Today, more than 10 million people in Taiwan use the Internet, and 2 million people employ high-speed broadband connections, such as ADSL. Therefore, we strongly believe the demand is there, and if a company can demonstrate it has good, customer-friendly service, it will be successful.
For Taiwan's mobile market, saturation is already quite high. People will not be satisfied with the same-old services: people always seek out better things. I think now is the time for Taiwan's market to attain a new level of quality. We have set up 700 base stations, as well as over 2,000 dealerships and 23 direct shops around the nation.
TT: Asia Pacific currently uses two South Korean vendors -- Samsung Electronics Co and South Korea Telecom -- to supply its handsets. Are there any business opportunities for local handset-makers?
An: We are in talks with some local handset manufacturers and right now several of them are capable of making 3G handsets. But one thing they still need to do is be able to make handsets compliant with the specifications of our data service platform. This requires using a specially-designed part, in order to offer data services on handsets.
That's a rather difficult obstacle to overcome, and local firms need to invest more on being able to do that.
We believe this would be a good opportunity for local handset vendors to start thinking of such considerations.
When the world started offering traditional mobile services five years ago, Taiwan handset makers missed a chance to grab business opportunities.
But as European and US vendors are still having trouble launching 3G handsets, this is a good opportunity for Taiwanese manufacturers to catch up.
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