CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech and computer trade show, has attracted more Taiwanese participants this year with more corporate executives set to personally take part in the event.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), Acer Inc, BenQ Corp (明基電通) and Tatung Inc (大同) are among the 777 Taiwanese exhibitors who will present their latest high-tech products at the event, which kicks off March 10 in the northern German city of Hanover.
Registration by Taiwanese exhibitors has increased about 10 percent from a year ago, making the nation the largest overseas participant in the fair, followed by China with 310 and the US with 209, according to statistics provided by the organizer's Taiwan office.
BenQ Chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) will fly to Hanover along with vice president Jerry Wang (王文燦) and the company's Lifestyle Design Center Director Manfred Wang (王千睿) for the show.
The four-year-old BenQ, the largest Taiwanese participant this year, will showcase 135 own-brand products in 10 categories, including a 1.8m rear-projection TV, 50cm to 80cm liquid crystal display TVs, as well as mobile phones that support MP3 and high-speed data transmission, or the so-called third generation phones, the company said in a release last week.
Acer president Gianfranco Lanci will also attend the event. His company will present new 66cm and 80cm LCD TVs, in addition to its latest TravelMate and Aspire-series laptops, to increase its market share in Europe.
Acer is currently a big player in European countries and is ranked by International Data Corp as the fourth-largest PC vendor.
Riding on the LCD TV trend, Asustek also plans to present its own-brand 80cm LCD TVs in the week-long show, coupled with notebook computers, personal data assistant phones and computer motherboards, the company said in a statement.
To expand its notebook computer market share in Europe, vice chairman Tong Tsu-hsien (童子賢) said Asustek plans to showcase a wide range of laptops in the event. The company forecasts shipments of 4 million notebook computers this year, up more than 30 percent from last year, Tong said.
Other Taiwanese executives that will present in CeBIT include Terry Gou (郭台銘) of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Lin Kuo Wen-yen (林郭文艷), executive vice president of home appliance company Tatung, according to Chinese-language news media reports last week.
Around 6,270 electronics and computer makers around the world, up from 6,109 last year, are scheduled to showcase the latest gadgets at the event. But the figure remains a far cry from the record 8,106 that came in 2001.
CeBIT comes just as the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) forecast a healthy 4.3 percent boost in sales this year in the global information technology (IT) and telecommunications sector to US$2.68 trillion.
"The ICT [information and communications technology] markets have definitely emerged from the tunnel of the deep crisis of 2001-2003," EITO chairman Bruno Lamborghini said last week in Brussels.
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