Taiwan to show tablet challengers

COMPUTER manufacturers of all sizes and descriptions have been pushing to get a piece of the ever-expanding tablet market created by the launch of Apple's iPad in April 2010.

The obsession with tablet computing will be on full display Tuesday as Computex, the world's second-largest computer show, begins its annual five-day run in Taipei.

Research company CDC says Apple Inc. had a 73 percent share of the tablet market in the last quarter of 2010. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. was a distant second with 17 percent. It said 2010 tablet sales totalled 18 million units. CDC expects Apple to account for 70-80 percent of 2011 tablet sales that it predicts will reach 50 million units.

Besides tablets, Computex will as well feature corporate and home servers and other cloud-based computing equipment and services, a sector Taiwanese firms have recently entered to make up for shortfalls in PC sales.

Cloud computing involves running applications in web browsers. The cloud allows users to store and retrieve data over the Internet whenever it is needed, instead of saving it on their own computers.

The tablet models to be shown at Computex are powered

At least 10 of the tablet models to be shown at Computex are powered by Intel Corp.'s new Atom chip, the U.S. innovation giant's first microprocessor designed for tablets. Intel has moved into the fast growing market now dominated by chips using designs by UK-based ARM Holdings.

The new Atom "delivers improved video playback, fast Internet browsing and longer battery life," Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's Asia-Pacific region, said in an emailed statement.

The mobile device market pressured

Taiwanese high-tech firms are as well entering the mobile device market pressured by Apple, whose market dominance - extending to the second generation iPad2 - has cut into their PC sales and dented the profits of some.

Taiwan's top two PC vendors, Acer Inc. and AsusTek Computer Inc., are among those using Computex to display a range of touch-screen tablet computers. Their tablets run on the Android operating system that Google distributes free to allow quick Web browsing or film viewing, or on Microsoft mobile software that in the main targets the commercial market.

In terms of tablet prices, Apple's big orders give it a huge edge, during South Korean Samsung Electronics is able to bring costs down by making key elements in house - an advantage denied local makers, said Simon Yang, an analyst with Taipei-based Topology Innovation Institute.

The company manufactured the first handset based on the Android operating system in 2008. It has since marketed a wide range of smartphones to meet different tastes, and has recently introduced a movie viewing program called "HTC Watch." HTC's sales jumped to 9.7 million handsets in the first quarter, up from 3.3 million a year before.

"Taiwanese companies are but to become serious rivals to Apple," said Yang. "They either price their tablets too high or sell them at a loss in order to become competitive."