Forget about those huge and bulky computers. In the near future, most people going online for the first time will do so through their mobile devices — and most of them are in Asia, according to Google Inc.
“We are going from a ‘Web-first world’ to a ‘mobile-first world,’” Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt told a Google Mobile First conference last week via a video conference call.
Mobile handsets are not just mobile telephones anymore, but rather supercomputers with connectivity, he said.
Nations with strong networks are capable of doing amazing things with smartphones, and Asia is going to be the global mobile leader for a very long time, he said.
The “mobile-first” environment is set to soon become a “mobile-only” world, where mobile is the primary and only device of choice a person carries, Schmidt said.
“Asia is going to be a huge market for years for this,” he added.
Asia’s dependence on mobile devices is growing, underlined by the many Asian nations, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, where smartphones are the only Web-connected device owned by more than 24 percent of the population, Google’s Consumer Barometer survey found.
In light of this, startups and existing firms would better focus on building applications for mobile devices, and Schmidt said the key for a successful application is an open platform, like Google Play.
An open market enables an application that is designed for local markets to enter the global market, he said.
Chris Yergoa, Google vice president of engineering and head of Google Play in the Asia-Pacific region, told the conference that surveys show Asia leads the world in smartphone adoption — and only in Asia are there more smartphone users than computer users.
The surveys show that Singapore has the world’s highest smartphone penetration, at 85 percent, followed by South Korea’s 80 percent.
Jaejoon Song, a senior executive with South Korean mobile and online game developer Com2us Corp, said that the recipe for global success on an open platform is to gain local acceptance for products and making users interact with each other.
“Service is also localized,” he said, adding that an online game, for example, would have instructions in different languages for different nations, as well as various advertising and marketing approaches.
Applications that can be used on handheld devices do not always to have installed on the device.
During the conference, Steve Lee from the Australian National University shared his invention: A cheap and simple do-it-yourself droplet lens that turns a smartphone into a microscope.
“We put a droplet of polymer onto a microscope cover slip and invert it. Then we let gravity do the work, pulling it into the perfect curvature,” Lee said, adding that putting the lens in front of the smartphone’s camera easily turns the device into a high-resolution microscope.
As mobile handsets become the most important device that people carry daily, the invention has a high potential of being revolutionary in medicine, education and farming, Lee said.
Global smartphone shipments totaled 327.6 million units in the past quarter, up 8.7 percent year-on-year and 25.2 percent quarter-on-quarter, according to International Data Corp.
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