This year’s Computex is expected to provide visitors the earliest opportunities in the world to put their hands on a variety of Windows 8 devices, an executive of the show’s co-organizer said yesterday.
“As Windows 8 works across a number of different platforms, visitors can expect to see a variety of Windows 8 devices at the upcoming Computex,” Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) deputy secretary-general Chang Li (張笠) said on the sideline of a product award ceremony. “Visitors can also expect to see devices running the operating system’s preview version, such as tablets for medical, military and security purposes.”
Taiwanese information technology companies are good at making tablet and notebook PCs and that is where they have focused in developing Windows 8 devices, Chang said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
More than 10 brand vendors and original design manufacturers across platforms will debut their first Windows 8 devices at this year’s Computex, which is set to be held at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Halls 1 to 3 and the Taipei International Convention Center in Xinyi District (信義) as well as Nangang Exhibition Hall, from Tuesday through Saturday next week.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) plans to unveil a number of 10.1-inch tablet PCs running on the touch-enabled Windows 8 operating system at Computex, with a 1366x768 resolution, which is lower than what Asustek’s current premium lines use. This is because Microsoft has asked manufacturers to follow certain specifications when producing the first wave of Windows 8 tablets, according to the company.
Unlike in the past few years, British investment bank Barclays PLC expects this year’s expo to generate more excitement, as in 2007 when netbooks were first introduced.
“We will, for the first time, be able to see actual working PCs running on Windows 8 [preview version], in addition to various models of Ultrabooks running Intel Corp’s Ivy Bridge CPU,” Kirk Yang (楊應超), an analyst at Barclays in Hong Kong, wrote in a note.
TCA, the co-organizer of the annual trade show, yesterday hosted a pre-show conference that showcased winning products of the 11th Best Choice Award BC Award.
There were 425 product entries for this year’s BC Awards selection and 37 of them were recognized as winning products, with nine crowned the Golden Award. TCA said this year’s winning products feature thin-light, portable and mobile computing qualities.
The nine Golden Award winners include AAEON Technology’s (研揚科技) IP65 Rugged Tablet Computer, Asustek’s Transformer Pad TF700 series and PadFone, and Elan Microelectronics Corp’s (義隆電子) Smart-Touchscreen.
Asustek’s Transformer Pad TF700KL is the company’s second tablet computer supporting 4G wireless broadband communication. The tablet will hit stores in the US and Europe next month.
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
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