After a three-year hiatus, the 2004 Taipei International Digital Photo Equipment Exhibition is slated to start tomorrow with 60 local and foreign companies set to showcase their latest products.
The four-day exhibition at Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall I will be open to the public, with free entry, an organizer from the Taipei Photo Equipment Association, said yesterday.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"As the biggest exhibition in the association's history, all exhibitors have prepared to dish out preferential deals to stimulate the market," the association's director general Lin Yung-hsiang (林永祥) said, citing major brands such as Nikon, Konica, Canon, Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus and Tamron.
He expected that the expo, which will also feature rummage sales, would attract over 60,000 people to catch a glimpse of the latest trends in the digital world.
Retail prices for digital video cameras, cameras, lenses and tripods at the event will drop as much as NT$3,000 (US$90) apiece compared with their market values, Lin added.
The local distributor for Japanese brand Canon, for example, says it will provide the cheapest 5-megapixel digital camera, the IXUS 500, which will be available at the exhibition for NT$12,900, down from the market price of NT$15,900.
Other specials are planned.
South Korean maker Samsung will present a "buy-one-get-one-free" program, allowing buyers of the digital video camera SCD-6050 (with 5 megapixel resolution and a retail price of NT$39,900) to bring home a digital camera, the Digimax D360 (priced at NT$9,900), at no extra charge.
Aside from special offers, manufacturers will also showcase their latest models.
Nikon will display its professional units the Coolpix8800 and the Coolpix8400, both of which just hit the market in the middle of last month.
Konica Minolta is expected to display its single-lens reflex camera, the Dynax 7D, which will not hit the shelves until the end of this month, said James Chen (
In addition to equipment shopping, the expo is also arranging lectures in which professionals will give tips on how to choose digital products and take photos with digital gear.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to