Six international handset companies will jointly host a telecom road show later this week in Taipei, as more people replace their phones with new models featuring color screens and built-in cameras.
The four-day show, starting on Thursday at Breeze Center (微風廣場) piazza in Taipei, is expected to feature 70 models of advanced color-screen phones and will focus on demonstrating MMS, or multimedia mobile services, organizers for the event said yesterday at a press conference.
Consumers will be able to test products and make discounted on-the-spot purchases from handset manufacturers such as Nokia Oyj, Motorola Inc, Samsung Electronics Co, LG Electronics Co, Dbtel Inc (大霸電子), and Taiwanese mobile-operator TransAsia Telecommunications Inc (泛亞電信), said Charlie Midgley, senior vice president of TransAsia.
But there is, of course, a catch. All handset purchases at the show are bundled with a two-year TransAsia service contract.
Multimedia mobile service is an advanced data transmission service allowing cellphone users to send color photos, multimedia graphics and audio files. But to access multimedia services, both the message sender and receiver must have color-screen handsets.
"Multimedia [mobile] service is a global trend ? obviously both handset makers as well as operators want to promote it and then to profit from it," Midgley said.
One industry analyst, however, said telecom companies have no choice but to promote multimedia content in a bid to squeeze more revenue from existing users.
"As the local mobile-service market has been highly saturated, companies have beem forced to find a new revenue vehicle," said Nathan Lin (
Taiwan has the world's highest mobile-service market saturation rate. As of April, there were 24.85 million mobile-phone users for a saturation rate of nearly 110 percent, surpassing Luxembourg to rank as the highest in the world, according to the Directorate General of Telecommunications.
However, the local market is lukewarm about multimedia services, with only 2 percent of mobile phone users currently having color-screen phones, Lin said.
Boosting multimedia or data service revenue is TransAsia's major goal for this year, and the company hopes to increase the percentage of income from the sector from last year's 3 percent to 5 percent this year, Midgley said.
He expects the telecom show, which opens between 11am and 9pm daily with free admission, to attract 30,000 to 50,000 visitors.
This is the first time over the past five years TransAsia and the six international handset makers decided to hold their own show rather than participate in the annual Telecom Show held by the China External Trade Development Council.
"This year we have more space for less money, so we are able to show off our products and services better than we can inside the Taipei World Trade Center," Midgley said.
Meanwhile, the 2003 Taipei International Telecom and Networking Show is slated to kick off at the Taipei World Trade Center between Aug. 23 and Aug. 26.
Over 100 exhibitors, including most phone service operators as well as content providers, are expected to set up 386 booths in this year's show.
The show opens at 9am and runs until 6pm. Admission is NT$100.
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