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.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
STILL ON THE TABLE: The government is not precluding advanced nuclear power generation if it is proven safer and the nuclear waste issue is solved, the premier said Taiwan is willing to be in step with the world by considering new methods of nuclear energy generation and to discuss alternative approaches to provide more stable power generation and help support industries, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. The government would continue to develop diverse and green energy solutions, which include considering advances in nuclear energy generation, he added. Cho’s remarks echoed President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments in an interview last month, saying the government is not precluding “advanced and newer nuclear power generation” if it is proven to be safer and the issue of nuclear waste is resolved. Lai’s comment had
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare