Following upon wins at Germany’s iF product design award and the red dot design award in March, Taiwanese companies once again highlighted their product design capabilities by winning two silver and three bronze awards at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition, a Taiwan Design Center (TDC, 台灣創意設計中心) official said yesterday.
The winners were announced on Friday.
Aside from high-tech design items such as wireless Voice-over-Internet Protocol phone and mobile Internet device (MID) user interfaces, other winning products by Taiwanese included conventional products such as bicycle lights and a portable barbeque grill.
“Winning these international design awards will add value to their products and enhance their competitiveness, which will also help Taiwanese brands enter the European and US markets,” Tony Chang (張光民), chief executive officer of TDC, said by telephone yesterday.
Chang said the awards also showed that Taiwan has transformed itself from a traditional labor-based economy into a knowledge-based economy, and that both conventional and high-tech industries will have to start using innovation, design and brands to make money in an increasingly competitive world.
Among the five winning designs was local consumer electronics maker BenQ Corp’s (明基電通) MID user interface.
“While the Greater China region in general is still more product-oriented, BenQ will focus more on consumers’ using behavior while developing market-oriented products,” Manfred Wang (王千睿), chief design officer at BenQ’s Lifestyle Design Center (數位時尚設計中心), said by telephone yesterday.
Moreover, Chang said he expects local firms will grab more than 200 awards by the end of this year. So far this year, Taiwanese have received 165 awards.
This would represent a watershed in design capability, he said.
Taiwanese firms snapped a total of 148 international awards in 2006 and 133 last year, Chang said.
The annual IDEA program is sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America and Business Week. The award was formerly known as the Industrial Design Excellence Awards.
IDEA, the iF product design award, the red dot design award and Japan’s Good Design Award (G-Mark), are the four major international product design awards.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks
RSS