Companies are hoping to provide a final boost to business at the annual IT Month consumer electronics fair, with the number of visitors in the first two days up by more than 10 percent from a year ago, the event organizer said yesterday.
“About 102,000 people visited the show today [Sunday] after 85,000 people on Saturday,” Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) project manager Candy Wang (王明玉) said by telephone. “For the first two days, we figure the number has grown by 10 to 15 percent compared with last year’s IT Month.”
The annual trade fair — called IT Month because it lasts one month and takes place first in Taipei, then Taichung and Kaohsiung — has generally served as the No. 1 venue in the last quarter for consumers seeking bargains and extra freebies, as makers cut prices and add numerous giveaways to boost sales before the year ends.
PHOTO: TANG CHIA-LING, TAIPEI TIMES
The TCA estimated the fair would draw a total of 2 million visitors for the three legs, with 770,000 visitors dropping by the nine-day Taipei segment.
The Taipei-based association, however, does not provide sales estimates on a daily basis, Wang said. The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday that first-day sales reached about NT$12 million (US$372,000), without citing where it obtained the figures.
“The newspaper’s estimate was not accurate. But certainly we have seen exhibitors in all categories reporting strong crowds and it looks like consumers are more willing to spend, especially when big discounts are involved,” Wang said.
Wang said what seemed to attract consumers this year were notebook computers and digital cameras. Sales of ultra-slim laptops using Intel Corp’s consumer ultra low voltage (CULV) processors appeared “particularly good” when contrasted with conventional notebooks and smaller netbooks, she said.
“Some CULV notebooks can even offer prolonged battery life of up to eight hours,” she said.
The TCA said earlier that 350 companies participating in the event would sell at least NT$6 billion in information technology products and consumer electronics this year.
Launched in 1979, the IT Month fair has become an important event for local consumers seeking to learn more about the latest IT applications. While in recent years companies have been less enthusiastic in using the venue to introduce their new products — in favor of other international exhibitions such as Taipei’s Computex and CeBIT in Germany — IT Month is still viewed as an important coomsumer spending barometer ahead of the year-end holidays.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), Taiwan’s second-largest notebook brand, said market sentiment for the current quarter was upbeat compared with the fourth quarter last year, when the global financial crisis prompted consumers to limit their purchases.
In the Taipei leg alone, Asustek hopes to sell more than 10,000 laptops — ranging from its popular Eee PC netbooks and conventional laptops to the latest three-dimensional notebooks — up from about 8,000 units last year, company vice president of sales Kevin Lin (林福能) said.
Aside from the latest Eee PC addition — the 12-inch 1201N, which retails at NT$19,988 — Asustek is exhibiting another newcomer to the family, the 9-inch T91MT, which is the industry’s first touch screen/tablet/netbook PC running on the Windows 7 operating system and doubles as a digital TV. The T91MT retails at NT$20,000.
“In previous years, tablet PC prices were between NT$40,000 andNT$50,000, which put off a lot of people,” Asustek product manager Jose Liao (廖逸翔) said. “Now, our Eee PC offers value for the money.”
BenQ Corp (明基), meanwhile, is showcasing a full series of projectors. Clients have a chance to walk away with free netbooks, universal serial buses and movie premiere tickets.
For its part, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) is targeting data users by offering a 3G mobile phone package — the mPro 950 — that allows users unlimited access to the Internet for NT$950 a month, 20 percent off the regular rate, plus a free wireless access card.
IT Month runs through Sunday at the Taipei World Trade Center halls 1 and 3, from 10am to 6pm. Admission is free.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
RSS