The Digital Content Institute (DCI) under the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) will coordinate with local universities and multimedia educational centers to sponsor training programs in the latest technologies, and 900 people are expected to be ready for the fast-growing digital content industry in the next six months.
DCI project manager Huang Wan-hua said that while the highly promising digital content industry demands increasing numbers of talented individuals in the fields of games, 3D computer animation, e-learning, audio-visual applications, digital content, Internet services, software and digital publications, the industry is facing a serious shortfall of specialists.
According to Huang, starting August, the institute will begin a series of training programs, with the support of National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Soochow University in Taipei, Southern Taiwan University of Technology in Tainan, the Education and Training Center and the Multimedia Experimental Center of the Institute for Information Industry in Taipei, as well as the Chinese Internet and Multimedia Association, the NuArt Institute and EC Multimedia Technology Corp.
He added that courses offered by the educational establishments will center on creative design, audio-visual design and program design in relation to computer games and 3D computer animation, and marketing and management.
While local digital content companies are encouraged to use the program for their on-the-job training, Huang said that the DCI will cover 60 percent of the tuition for the 900 trainees.
With such promising prospects, the digital content industry has been pinpointed as a strategic industry by the Cabinet. Last year, the production value of Taiwan's digital content industry amounted to NT$153.7 billion, an increase of 15.2 percent over the preceding year, according to IDB statistics.
The IDB estimated that between this year and 2006, the industry may achieve an annual growth above 20 percent, and by 2006, the production value will reach NT$370 billion.
Currently, there are nearly 1,700 digital content companies in Taiwan, with overall employment of around 33,000.
The IDB forecast that by 2006, the number of digital content companies will reach 3,000 and the number of employees will total 70,000.
At the moment, export value only accounts for 12 percent of the industry's production value. The IDB has set a target of 30 percent by the year of 2006.
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