Thanks to tech firms’ new products and discounts, a record-high 950,000 people visited the Taipei leg of the annual IT Month show at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall over the past week, event organizer Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) said yesterday.
The number of visitors to the Taipei trade show increased 4.39 percent from 910,000 visitors last year, the association said.
“Overall, driven by sales of newly launched products, such as detachable laptops, wearable devices, new-generation digital single-lens reflex cameras and PC peripherals, exhibitors at this year’s IT Month show saw their sales grow significantly over last year,” the TCA said in an e-mailed statement.
Photo: CNA
To showcase to visitors the latest wearable devices on the market, the association this year invited GPS device makers Garmin Ltd (台灣國際航電) and Trywin Co Ltd to exhibit their new smart-watch products.
In addition, projector vendor Optoma Corp (奧圖碼), along with six other electronics makers, displayed the company’s first 3D printer product at the show this year, while South Korea’s LG Electronics Co joined the exhibition to showcase its first flexible OLED TV product, the TCA said.
“By product, we saw more visitors at the smart-watch and 3D printer exhibition zones to check out products they’d never seen before,” TCA spokeswoman Candy Wang (王明玉) said by telephone.
“However, there is also a trend that more visitors chose to participate in the IT Month exhibition to seek mobile devices that can ‘transform’ into smartphone, tablet or laptop, and they mostly found ideal products at laptop brands’ booths,” she added.
Supported by strong sales of the company’s new “Transformer Book T100” detachable laptop, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s fifth-largest PC brand, yesterday said it generated more than NT$200 million (US$6.76 million) of sales during the fair.
Asustek said in a statement that more than 20,000 visitors visited its booth at the fair to experience the company’s latest tablet products, as well as its new 14-inch to 15-inch laptop products.
Meanwhile, boosted by sales of Ultrabooks and the company’s flagship Iconia tablets, Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s fourth-largest PC brand, yesterday said its total sales at this year’s show grew by more than 10 percent from last year.
“Thanks to the opening of Taipei’s Xinyi MRT Line, increased number of visitors helped lift Acer’s total sales at the IT fair, and of the Acer products, sales of the company’s Windows 8-powered Iconia W510 increased the most, by 100 percent,” Central News Agency cited Acer marketing division head Lin Cheng-Li (林正立) as saying in a report.
After Taipei, the annual tech show is to move to Greater Taichung, from Saturday through Dec. 19, then Greater Kaohsiung, from Dec. 28 through Jan. 12, and Greater Tainan between Jan. 10 and Jan. 15, the TCA said.
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