Google Taiwan is betting on mobile Internet, with the recent explosive growth in netbooks and smartphones, the company said on Thursday.
The company said it placed a dedicated team in Taiwan to look after its free Android mobile Internet platform — in close proximity to the world’s largest PC and smartphone contract manufacturers — and capitalize on the mobile trend, which it thinks will last for at least 10 years.
Research by Strategy Analytics Inc shows that Google could overtake Microsoft Corp as the No. 1 mobile operating system provider — with more than 50 million plus Android platform units — by 2012.
When Android was first introduced in the second half of last year, less than 10 million units were downloaded. This year the number is expected to grow to around 15 million units.
Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰), general manager of Google Taiwan, believes that for domestic technology companies to come out ahead, they need to develop their own brands, rather than be controlled by brand name vendors. Chien cited Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and HTC Corp (宏達電) as examples.
Although the PC market is dominated by foreign companies, the netbook segment is 80 percent Taiwanese, which was a promising sign for local tech firms, Chien said at a press gathering in Taipei.
“Local original design manufacturers face razor-thin profit margins of 3 [percent] to 4 percent. We believe our free Android platform will give them more breathing room,” he said.
Following up on comments by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Chien said he truly believes the Internet will be a critical part of global economic recovery. The search giant makes its revenues from Web advertising via its search functions and YouTube.
Google Taiwan said revenue grew 59 percent last year and it was now the market leader in Internet video and online maps.
Google Taiwan had an arrival rate of 52 percent in 2006, but by last year it had increased to 80 percent. The arrival rate is calculated by estimating the percentage of users online during a set period of time who access a certain Web site.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained