For those who are interested in taking a sneak peek at the latest trends in tablets, Taipei’s Spring Computer Fair, which opened yesterday and and runs until Monday, is the place to go.
Tablets from big names such as Dell Inc and Samsung Electronics Inc as well as those from lesser-known brands including South Korea’s SK Telecom, China’s Huawei Technologies Ltd (華為) and First International Computer Inc (大眾電腦) are all vying for consumer attention at the fair at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 1.
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s second-largest telecom operator, is touting its own branded tablet, “myPad,” which is contract manufactured by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦).
The 7-inch myPad runs the Android operating system, has a 3 megapixel camera and weighs 388g.
However, the product did not seem very responsive in terms of YouTube video viewing and touchscreeen swiping. The sales person even admitted that more improvements need to be made.
Taiwan Mobile is also promoting the 7-inch Galaxy Tab from Samsung and the 5-inch Dell Streak, with the latter the newest member to its tablet offerings.
Over at the Vibo Telecom Inc (威寶電信) booths, a promoter said its own-branded 7-inch tablet, the Vpad, was a short-lived one after being introduced in December.
“The tablet drained the battery too fast and was not very user-friendly according to complaints from customers,” he said, adding that Vibo was no longer promoting the Vpad.
Vibo has instead chosen to promote the Galaxy Tab and Ideos S7 from Huawei Technologies Ltd (華為) at the fair.
For bigger brands Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) and Acer, yesterday was the first day their first slew of tablets officially greeted Taiwanese consumers — who showed some interest, but not enough to noticeably increase sales.
A sales representative at Senao International Co (神腦國際) said it had allocated only 40 units from Asustek and 20 tablets from Acer for the fair.
If the products were to sell out yesterday, consumers would have to preorder and wait until the end of the month to get their hands on the tablets.
Hsieh Chung-hua (謝宗樺), 42, was one of the early birds to bring home an Asustek Eee Pad Transformer, which cost him NT$14,900 for a Wi-Fi, 16G model.
“Android Market is the new -rising star to take on Apple’s App Store. I want to know what Android Market has in store,” the beverage store franchisee told the Taipei Times.
Hsieh, whose children have been playing with his iPad for two months now, particularly likes the Transformer’s detachable keyboard that doubles as a battery.
However, those hoping to check out the Flyer from HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone brand, will be disappointed.
HTC’s resellers said that their original plan to showcase the Flyer was scrapped because HTC did not supply the tablet, adding that the Flyer is now expected to hit local store shelves at the end of the month or early next month at the earliest.
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],”
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts