ICT Executives Talk About Market Trends at Computex 2013

Mobility, cloud computing, multi-screen and tablet-laptop hybrid stirred conversations

at the Computex 2013 trade show, held June 4-8, where gurus of information-communications technology (ICT) industries weighed in with views on industry trends.

The Taipei Computer Association Chairman J.T. Wang, also the incumbent chairman of Acer Inc., suggested that Taiwan's handheld smart device manufacturers should look to Apple, Microsoft and Google for direction or at least two of them, given that the big three set the rules of the game without clear signs of the leader or quitter.

He pointed out that handheld smart devices, namely smart phones and tablet PCs, have unseated PCs as the major growth driver of global high-tech markets. Regardless of growth slowdown, he noted that PC shipments still total 300-400 million systems a year globally, defying “the Death of the PC” forecast by media and industry specialists.

In light of increasing number of PC makers following his company's launch of tablet-laptop hybrid, ASUSTEK Computer Inc. Chairman Johnny Shih suggested that there should not be too much compromise between tablet PC and laptop PC when PC makers designed the hybrids, stressing that all designs should be user-oriented lest to be in vain.

The company is the inventor of the “Transformer” family of the hybrid, becoming the world's first PC maker to integrate tablet PC with laptop PC.

Shih questioned how attractive a hybrid can be to consumers with design that rotates the touch-screen display to reveal keyboard? A sarcastic jab likely aimed at competitors Lenovo and Dell. He feels that too much fanciful design might actually reward manufacturers with nothing but misguided market calculation.

He went on that Win8 had a bumpy start because it failed to “hit consumers' critical needs,” also citing ASUSTEK's Transformer Book Trio as success in combining tablet, laptop and desktop into one without compromising individually inherited characteristics.

Nvidia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) J.H. Huang said the multi-screen era is already here thanks to cloud-computing and virtualization technologies for touch-screen terminal devices including smartphones, tablet PCs, laptops, desktops and TVs. The company is a world leading vendor of graphic-processing chipsets. Huang feels that multi-screen world information-communications technology (ICT) manufacturers can survive only by integrating software and hardware to offer cross-computer platform service instead of making hardware alone.

Huang pointed out that the multi-screen world is mainly built on application processor, open OS framework as Android, and cloud-computing surroundings. He added that parallel processing is a crucial technology for multiple picture frames to be opened on a screen, but the processing is enabled only by the virtualization technology in graphics chips that synchronize clocking with central processing units (CPUs).

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Morris Chang said he is optimistic about the development of cloud-based apps, which he stressed are a major growth driver of global mobile computing device market. He noted that his company's energetic growth in recent years has much to do with cloud development, citing the upbeat views about cloud market that executives of chip vendors ARM and Qualcomm offered at the Summit Forum of this show.

Intel Executive Vice President, General Manager for Sales and Marketing Group, Thomas M. Kilroy, said Intel is ushering PC industry into a two-in-one and perceptual computing world. He said over the past two years Intel had thoroughly changed the exterior of laptops and now leads the industry into two-in-one and all-in-one device era with its 22-nm Silvermont micro-architecture. His company will work with Taiwan's OEMs and ODMs to promote two-in-one devices, which combine performance and productivity of traditional laptop with mobility and responsiveness of tablet.

Intel will integrate Intel Perceptual Computing Technology into its two-in-one platform to allow consumers to interact with PCs via voice and gesture not to mention touch. Intel Creative Senz3D camera takes over human vision to recognize sensing commands. Two-in-one devices are forecast to be available in the second half of 2014.