IBM Corp, the world's No. 1 server vendor, yesterday announced that it would establish a server development center here -- its first outside the US.
"Taiwan's R&D [research and development] and manufacturing capability makes it an excellent choice for the opening of IBM's second xSeries Development center," Rodney Adkins, vice president of development at IBM's systems group, said in the press conference yesterday.
The country's complete supply chain, IBM's partnership with local manufacturers and government support made Taiwan stand out from other possible contenders for the new center, IBM Taiwan's general manager Jason Hsu (
The new center is located in the Nankang Software Park (
The Nankang center has 70 employees, including 20 expatriates from IBM's headquarters in the US. Hsu said the number of employees is expected to rise to 100.
The new center will focus on high volume Intel-based servers and the first batch of products developed by the center is expected to be shipped by the end of this year, Adkins said.
According to research house International Data Corp (IDC), IBM held onto its No. 1 spot in the worldwide server systems market with a 29.7 percent market share in factory revenue in the first quarter of this year, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co and Sun Microsystems.
IBM's new center could help sharpen its competitiveness through closer ties with its contract makers, which would help shorten R&D time, expedite time to market and reduce costs by about 20 percent, said Dixon Cheng (
Cheng attended the press conference along with representatives from other contract makers for IBM, including Asustek Computer Co (
The global server market is expected to grow by 5 percent this year to US$53 billion -- driven by a resurgent corporate demands from late last year -- and maintain a compound annual growth rate of 3.8 percent to US$60.8 billion in 2008, according to IDC.
IDC also predicts that this country's server market will grow by 9.4 percent to US$327 million in 2008 from US$211 million this year.
The Nankang center could help IBM tap the sizeable server market of small and medium businesses, which account for 98 percent of the nation's industry, Adkins said.
In other industry developments, Dell Taiwan yesterday launched two new models of corporate desktop computers.
Since about 30 percent of the installed computers worldwide are at least three years old, research house Gartner Inc estimates that replacement demand will reach 100 million computers this year and 120 million units next year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy