Computex Taipei 2015 trade show is going on, and you might have seen that mentioned on some IT news. COMPUTEX TAIPEI is ismajor professional ICT trade show, co-organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council and the Taipei Computer Association. It is the largest IT tradeshow in Asia.
The event is well covered on media. Here are some links to news on that event so you can get idea what new ICT is expected soon to come available:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The USB Lego, bluetooth coffee cups and connected cats of Computex 2015
The cloud’s got consumer tech in a nasty tangle
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/05/the_clouds_got_consumer_tech_in_a_nasty_tangle/
Taiwan’s technology industry likes to position the annual Computex expo as the week in which it shows off its ingenuity to the world.
This year’s show might just have shown that Taiwan – and the rest of us – are in a bit of a rut.
Last year, I couldn’t move at Computex without stumbling over a booth offering a zillion variations on USB memory sticks. This year the ubiquitous items are USB batteries for any conceivable situation, chargers for anything capable of conveying an electron and brackets to hold it all in place. All in designer colours, too, so that technology becomes part of your lifestyle.
To me it’s all symptomatic of the shift to the cloud: in past years we needed to carry content around with us. Now we need the power to keep connected all day to access content stored elsewhere.
Last year’s endless USB sticks have therefore become this year’s USB power ports for your car in any number of shapes and colours.
Exhibit A for that argument is this LEGO-fied battery designed to be plugged into the mains so you can pop it on the breakfast or coffee table and recharge stuff while you eat or take in some tellie. The designers of this creation not only borrowed Lego’s stud size, they developed bricks that convey power into USB ports.
Another trend on the show floor was USB chargers with matching accessories. Quite a few outfits sold big batteries in attractive pastel colours, plus fans or lights to match.
ARM coins it in the IoT, costumes, landfill rescue and the internet of cats
Off the beaten track at Computex is all manner of enterprise and industrial kit. This year I spotted quite a few white box servers and switches, more than a few in open compute form factors. Anything with an interface – serial, parallel , digital, analog or pigeon-powered – is now a Thing, as in Internet of …
I’d need a week at Computex to do that stuff justice, so let’s stay close to home for a quick peek in the form of ARM’s new Cordio platform, a tiny Bluetooth LE radio ready for integration with its Cortex processors.
The device most-often trying to claim “Thing” status was surveillance gear, either video cameras or other sensors. Most were of a muchness, but the little robots below caught my eye. The idea is that you’ll get your old phone and instead of turning it into landfill, strap it to these bots and let them roam about your house or office.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computex: Broadcom and Qualcomm surf Wave 2
Majors court OEMs with 802.11ac silicon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/computex_broadcom_and_qualcomm_surf_wave_2/
While the show floor gets headlines for consumer gadgets, Computex is also a venue for sand-slingers to try and get a handshake from Asian kit companies for their next round of chips.
And with Wave 2 802.11ac on the manufacturing schedules, it’s no surprise that Qualcomm and Broadcom are duking it out in the exhibition with duelling chipsets.
From Qualcomm, there’s a pair of multi-user multi-input/multi-output (MU-MIMO) devices targeting home and enterprise access points.
The Qualcomm chipsets run a 4×4 antenna configuration and support 160 MHz radio channels. The 160 MHz operation can be either as a single channel, or as bonded non-contiguous 80 MHz channels, and are the next speed boost for 802.11ac over today’s 80 MHz radios.
There’s a home router version, the QCA9984, and the QCA9994 for enterprise access points.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Strippers, Unicorn Computers and Martian Watches of Computex
Taiwan’s tech tat bazaar viewed through the lens of ten prominent products
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/06/the_strippers_unicorn_computers_and_martian_watches_of_computex/
Computex I’ve been to plenty of technology shows around the world but never one as diverse as Computex, where you’ll find single-board industrial computers side-by-side with strippers.
1. Landfill Android fondleslabs
It’s impossible to walk through Computex without seeing Android tablets in every fourth or fifth booth.
So many vendors offer seven or eight inch models, with so little visible differentiation, that it is a little depressing to contemplate the waste of human ingenuity that has gone into their creation.
2. Smart watches
Another product it was hard to avoid was smartwatches, most of which looked like clunky, purpose-less trash capable of making Android run on a tiny screen but hardly offering a compelling phone accessory, never mind challenging more conventional wristwear.
3. Internet of things
Much was made about the Internet of Things being big at this year’s Computex. In reality, there were none of the ubiquitous sensors we’ve been promised, only a smattering of weatherproof routers and a few folks offering the guts of telematics for cars. Gadgets like Bluetooth bathroom scales and WiFi lightbulbs were lumped into the category and easy to find, but also easy to dismiss because none appeared original in concept or execution.
One category of product often shoe-horned into the IoT was small industrial computers and/or comms kit.
4. A billion boring batteries
Let’s talk about USB batteries, aka power banks, to illustrate that Computex is not all about leading edge kit.
kit-makers of Taiwan seem collectively to have decided that anxiety about mobile device battery life
Computex is therefore replete with backup batteries in every shape and size.
5. Cute locals
It was rare to see actual new stuff at Computex
6. Gaming, gaming, gaming and more gaming
A remarkable amount of kit at Computex is aimed at gamers, begging the question just how many people really care about this stuff. Yes, we know games generate more cash than Hollywood. But is there really a need for hundreds of new gamer-directed PC cases each year?
This year the must-have gamer item seems to be cyberpunk-styled mice
The sheer variety of gamer-directed kit gets a bit depressing at Computex: you feel there’s no way every exhibitor can possibly turn a profit.
7. Doomed wireless chargers
One of the many announcements at the show was that several top OEMs – Fujitsu, Foxconn, Lenovo, Logitech, and Panasonic – have signed up for the Alliance For Wireless Power, aka the A4WP aka “Rezence”. The A4WP also used the show to reveal that it plans to allow multi-device wireless charging up to 50 watts.
That didn’t stop backers of the rival Qi wireless power standard showing off all manner of kit
8. Storvers
There’s not a lot of enterprise products at Computex. Taiwan’s storage vendors – the likes of Synology and QNAP – are present with their vanilla SANs and there are a few nameless JBOD vendors.
A few of those companies and server OEMs had storage servers on the floor.
9. Selfiecessories
Quite a few products I spotted at Computex promise to help you take better selfies.
The show was also replete with many WiFi camera designs. Some were marketed as baby cameras, in some cases allowing you to keep an eye on your offspring over Skype.
10. An infinite number of phone and fondleslab cases
If you go more than two minutes at Computex without seeing a case for a mobile device, you’re doing it wrong.
Again, it is a little depressing to see dull case after dull case.
The few standouts were either the result of unusually high production values – think Italian leather – or unlikely homages
There’s some very interesting stuff there once you get beyond the Unicorns and the Showgirls.
Finding the valuable nuggets among the dirt is, however, a task that requires a lot of effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computex: MediaTek shows off contactless heart rate monitor and IoT wine brewer
Ideas become products thanks to LinkIt IoT chip
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2411746/computex-mediatek-shows-off-contactless-heart-rate-monitor-wearables-for-the-elderly-and-iot-wine-brewer
TAIPEI: WHILE MEDIATEK MIGHT BE best known for its multi-core smartphone processors, the firm was very keen to show off its more adventurous side at Computex 2015.
Launched in autumn last year, MediaTek Labs is a worldwide initiative to help developers of any background or skill level to create and market wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
With the firm’s LinkIt Development Platform, based on the MediaTek Aster (MT2502) chipset, sitting at its core, the Labs programme provides developers, makers and service providers with both software and hardware development kits, technical documentation and business support.
The next wave of consumer gadgets
https://labs.mediatek.com/site/global/tech_biz/wearables_iot/index.gsp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computex: Windows 10 proves Microsoft made a mistake with Windows 8
Column All we ever wanted was some familiarity
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2411737/computex-windows-10-proves-microsoft-made-a-mistake-with-windows-8
The show has been a little quieter than previous years in terms of physical devices, such as laptops, tablets and desktops.
It was by no means short of big news announcements, with Intel, AMD and Mediatek showing off the latest in processor offerings that will shape the market over the next year or so, but it seemed that the guys who use these chips and build devices around them – the OEMs – held back somewhat.
One of the reasons, I think, is down to Microsoft. We are merely six weeks away from the launch of the firm’s biggest operating system release for quite some time: Windows 10, which comes out on the 29 July.
Redmond held a two-hour press conference to prove how big the release will be, most of which was spent talking about the features that consumers and businesses can expect from the upcoming software.
And with Computex being so close, but yet a little too far away, from the Windows 10 release date, I think many hardware makers are holding off until the launch day to show off any new devices, when the hype surrounding the OS will be at its peak.
This is understandable. Why announce a new device running an almost out-of-date OS?
Needless to say, Microsoft did the right thing in using Computex as a platform to drum up some momentum for an OS that should give us back those Windows 7 features we loved and miss, while adding some much needed new ones.
From my impressions, Windows 10 incorporates some of the nice-looking features of Windows 8, such as the Live Tiles, with the familiarity of Windows 7, such as the start menu, bringing together the best of both worlds.
We don’t only see the arrival of the much missed Start button, but we see windows sizing options on native apps (something that really annoyed me about Windows 8) and a generally much cleaner interface that hasn’t been over simplified, again, like Windows 8 was.
All this led me to believe that Microsoft made a huge mistake with Windows 8. It tried too hard to impress the masses with brand new features, such as the Live Tiles and optimised gestures for touch, before Windows-powered touch devices had really taken off.
Microsoft has obviously gone to great lengths to ensure that it won’t make the same mistakes again and carried out numerous tests with developers, constantly asking for feedback and following it through with updates to ensure that Windows 10 is actually what people want before it’s released.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow
Computex 2015: Bringing Home IoT
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326800&
Computex, world’s second largest information and communications technology (ICT) show and a grande dame at age 35, not surprisingly pushed three major themes this year (wait for it): The Internet of Things, mobile applications, and the Cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computex (and Taiwan) Tries to Pivot to IoT, Wearables
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1326903&
This year’s show had a collection of interesting IoT devices and inexpensive wearable devices that you don’t normally see. Missing were larger Korean and Chinese manufacturers.
Taiwan’s entry into the IoT market is late and is a mixed bag of diverse devices and services. Many of the Computex talks and panel discussions featuring companies such as Acer, ARM, MediaTek, and STMicroelectronics, focused on IoT development and a section of the main TWTC hall was devoted to IoT devices. I found one of the more interesting connected power control approaches at Computex in the Full Enterprise Corp. booth — connected power switches with a flexible networking solution. The Full Enterprise power strips and outlets had network modules for each connectivity option including: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and Z-Wave. In many ways this represents the traditional Taiwan ODM approach towards any new technology: “tell us what you want and we will build it.” But it was still a refreshing change from the many IoT devices that commit to just one wireless networking protocol, limiting system integration flexibility, even if it wasn’t particularly elegant. The present Tower of Babel in IoT networking is one of the major challenges in industrial and home automation.