This year was a watershed year for Computex Taipei, as it attracted a record number of buyers, exhibitors and booths. Altogether, there were 1,725 exhibitors and 4,492 stalls. Among these, 328 were international participants from across the globe. The number of buyers this year reached 34,685. The top five buyer countries constituted of US, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore.
To create more business opportunities, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) organized over 2,000 procurement meetings on June 3 and 4. Many of these meetings saw participation by big brands like Gigabyte, PQI, A-data, etc. Altogether, these procurement meetings attracted 113 companies from 32 countries.
Products such as competitively priced PCs, GPS, LCD TVs, and Internet communication products were most popular among buyers. According to industry estimates, during the two-days, the procurement meetings generated business worth $200 million.
This year, the exhibition also saw a number of companies including Gigabyte, Transcend, Foxconn A-data and Genius, showcasing a lot of their upcoming models of personal devices that included innovative digital frames, designer flash drives as well as converged devices like ultra mobile PCs (UMPCs).
Transcend showcased its latest digital photo frame, Tphoto 720. The product, which is yet to be launched in India, can operate music, video as well as radio, besides being a regular digital photo frame.
Focusing on the telecom channel community, Transcend is all set to introduce various innovative flash drives as well as new models of digital frames in India. Similarly, Taiwan-based Genius is also going to introduce its new cutting-edge models of digital frames in the country.
Additionally, A-data showcased its set of flash drives under the Nobility, Sports and Disney series specially designed for the young generation. Similarly, PNY, a memory focused company showcased its Pen Attaché, its pendrive, in the range of 4 to 8GB.
Taking the converged device experience to the next level, Gigabyte launched its ultra mobile personal device M700, which is positioned as a highly converged device. It is a 7-inch 1,024x600 device equipped with VIA’s 1.2GHz C7-M ULV processor, 768MB of 533MHz DDR 2 and offers 40 and 60GB of hard drive capacity.
This device is really small and compact, and hence experts close to the industry believe that it will surely be stocked in a lot of telecom outlets in India, which are already looking at converged devices.
At present, a lot of large-format retailers like RPG Cellucom, Croma, Reliance Retail, Jumbo, etc as well as a number of multi-brand retailers are looking at personalized converged devices as a big focus to provide a holistic experience to the end-customer when it comes to presenting a mix of telecom and IT products.
(ziaa@cybermedia.co.in)