After a digital video and dance performance from SR Productions, COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2019 opened on Tuesday with President Tsai Ing-wen praising Taiwan’s ICT industry, noting that the industry totalled US$157 billion in exports per year and served as the engine of Taiwan’s economic growth and a key part of the global supply chain.
Focusing on AI and IoT; blockchain; 5G, innovation; gaming and extended reality (XR), COMPUTEX brings together the entire supply chain and value chain, with buyers and vendors meeting to exchange ideas, discover and advance the latest industry trends, and learn from the successes of their peers.
Tsai was joined at Tuesday’s opening ceremony by Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) Chairman James C.F. Huang.
“Like a huge, digital tsunami, new technologies have transformed our global economy in the past few years. Today, we are living in an era where everything is connected and constantly learning from each other. In order to survive and thrive in this new digital landscape, every industry has to be a digital industry, and every company, no matter what fields you are in, has to be a tech company,” Huang said. “In that sense, COMPUTEX is not just a show that serves only the global ICT industry. COMPUTEX is here to serve everybody, in every company, in every industry… COMPUTEX will have something to offer you that will give you a digital edge, connect you with new ideas, new technologies and new business.”
As chairman of TAITRA, Huang collaborated with fellow speaker and Taipei Computer Association Chairman T.H. Tung as primary organizers of this year’s five-day event from May 28 to June 1, which has brought more than 1,680 exhibitors to more than 5,500 booths across its multiple venues at the Taiwan International Convention Center and Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
After American Institute in Taiwan Director William Brent Christensen highlighted Taiwan’s importance to global technology supply chains, John Jorritsma, mayor of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, noted the “strong bonds” between Taiwan and the Netherlands, as both are “trading nations, and our countries are gateways: Taiwan to Europe, and the Netherlands to Asia.”
Jorritsma went on to describe similarities between the two nations, such as export volumes and relative economic size and power, while sharing challenges such as labor and talent shortages.
“Over 250 Dutch companies export to Taiwan,” Jorritsma said, before naming Taiwanese firms such as ASUSTeK that have operations in the Netherlands, making the Taiwanese-Dutch relationship “very fruitful.”
Ministry of Economic Affairs Minister Shen Jong-Chin said ICT exports increased by an annual 2.56 percent to US$157 billion, and he was followed by President Tsai, who took the stage to say that innovation and creativity propelled the ICT industry to its current success.
Her administration will continue to advance its Asian Silicon Valley and Digital Nation and Innovative Economic Development projects to advance the digital sector in Taiwan, she said.
To promote innovators and startups, COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2019 also includes InnoVEX, a special exhibition featuring 402 startups from 24 countries, the organizers said.
The program closed with a brief awards ceremony for the COMPUTEX d&i awards, with prizes going to Acer for its Smart Parking Meter System, to Augmented Intelligence Inc. for its BodyMap anatomical visualization product, and to BioPro Scientific for its NeuLive brain monitoring system.