Shifting sizes and shapes test tech suppliers
Industry giants and minnows are in the same boat in trying to anticipate user preferences
Ian Langton went hunting at Asia's largest tech show for "rugged tablet" parts. The product development manager at British tablet maker Captec had found just four matches for his touch-operated gadgets that are similar to the iPad but hardly as sturdy.
Down the hall at one of the Computex Taipei's stadium-like showrooms, lined with 1,724 exhibitors, Turbotouch Technology's sales and marketing manager Ruby Cherng was gauging from show attendance whether anyone but emerging-market clients wanted the 12-year-old Taiwanese firm's largish touchscreens for all-in-one computers. "The demand is growing, but so is the competition," Cherng said.
These stories suggest for the tech show's second straight year that mobile, touchscreen computers remain a top world tech trend among common users.
Last year, Computex exhibitors sought attention for standard Android or Windows tablets that cost less than Apple's bellwether iPads. At the show that closed on Saturday with about 130,000 visitors - 38,300 from overseas - the most sought-after exhibitors came with hardware related to tablets, thin notebooks or hybrids of the two.
Yet hybrids will claim just 12 per cent of a declining overall notebook PC market this year, forecasts WitsView, a division of market research firm TrendForce in Taipei. It cites costs and design "bottlenecks", including use of flash memory and extra batteries that have raised prices.
"It's basically going to come down to their functions," WitsView research director Eric Chiou said, speculating on which devices will sell best. "The detachable notebook-tablet has a lot of potential," he said, but "the commercial users will want some specific functions".