Peer-to-peer Internet telephony company Skype Technologies SA is considering setting up a product certification center in Taiwan, as local companies have developed a large number of Skype-compatible products, company officials said yesterday.
Half of the 60 companies that obtained product certification from Skype last year were Taiwanese, Skype engineer Manrique Brenes said after attending a forum at Computex in Taipei.
Skype's existing certification center, together with the company's research and development center, is located in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. Estonia is geographically far from Taiwan, prompting several Taiwanese companies to request that Skype establish a second certification center here to speed up the certification process, said Geoffrey Prentice, Skype's general manager for Asia.
Skype's business is expanding rapidly in Taiwan, especially since the company allied with PC Home Online (網路家庭) to set up a local portal site and develop several devices to facilitate the voice-over-Internet Protocol service.
As Taiwan is an important market for Skype, the company would seriously look into the possibility of opening a certification center here, Prentice said.
Skype received certification requests for some 350 products last year, but only half of the submissions were successful. The company's certification procedure includes between 100 and 150 steps, depending on the device in question, Brenes said.
Skype-enabled products developed by Taiwanese companies are mostly wireless devices such as bluetooth headsets, Brenes said. Skype charges between 550 euros (US$704) and 800 euros to certify a product, he said.
Skype, which was recently acquired by auction portal eBay, is now the world's leader in Internet voice communications, offering people new ways to communicate in a global online era.
TPP RALLY: The clashes occurred near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday at a rally to mark the anniversary of a raid on former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency. Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke. The Taipei
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS