Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will appear at the Computex trade fair in Taipei tomorrow to plug Taiwanese innovation.
He just won't be doing it in person.
"There is an amazing amount of innovations in PCs and mobile devices coming from Taiwan," Gates says in a 30-second promotional clip that makes its debut at the fair tomorrow.
The video, which also includes endorsements from marketing guru Philip Kotler, F.C. Kohli, the father of the Indian software industry, will also be broadcast on the BBC.
These bigshots are all giving a thumbs-up to Taiwan's role in the global IT landscape, but will Computex, the nation's most important IT trade show, live up to the name as the world's second-largest fair after CeBIT in Germany?
"Computex is an `economic window,' which allows buyers from all over the world to keep in touch with superior Taiwanese IT firms," said Enoch Du (
Each year, visitors from 130 countries come to Computex, a far more impressive spread than CeBIT, despite the latter's larger turnout and exhibitor profile, Du said.
Similar trade fairs in China are not comparable because they are mainly concerned with internal sourcing and lack the international scale of Computex.
The show, now in its 27th year, runs from tomorrow to Saturday, and will have booths at all three exhibition halls of the Taipei World Trade Center, as well as the Taipei International Convention Center.
Local heavyweights such as Acer Inc, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and BenQ Corp (明基) will be on hand with international brands such as Nvidia Corp, Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp.
TAITRA said there will be a total of 1,333 vendors occupying 2,926 booths this year and organizers hope to attract 132,000 visitors, including 32,000 from overseas.
That would be a slight increase over last year's numbers: 1,312 exhibitors; 2,907 booths and 130,452 visitors including 30,275 from abroad.
Amy Teng (
"Innovation isn't the theme at Computex. We can't compare apples to oranges, with CeBIT or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas," she said.
Most innovations will be showcased at the CES, with CeBIT luring mostly European buyers, she said.
But Computex is still a good place to check out the latest components -- the strength of Taiwanese firms, she said.
Du said visitors would find this year's Computex as exciting as its predecessors.
Among the offerings will include applications surrounding the Vista operating system, WiMAX, Apple Inc's iPhone and Nintendo Co's Wii, he said. There is even a display of PC peripherals running on eco-friendly solar power, Du said.
"We are primarily concerned with how to attract more overseas buyers to the show, and create more business value for Taiwanese suppliers," he said.
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