Taipei, June 4 (CNA) The chiefs of Taiwanese PC maker Acer Inc. and chip designer MediaTek Inc. said Wednesday at the Computex Summit Forum that their companies will address software-hardware integration to cash in on the coming age of cloud computing technology.
Acer Chairman Stan Shih said that in facing this new competitive playing field, IT firms should quickly embrace the concept of open cloud computing platforms and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
"Cloud is destined to happen anyway. It's an inevitable trend," Shih said during his keynote speech at the forum, adding that Acer has completely repositioned its strategic direction to reflect the opportunities and potential of cloud computing technology.
Acer, which returned to profitability in the first quarter of the year after posting three consecutive quarters of losses, is shedding its former focus on hardware manufacturing to adopt an integrated cloud technology model rooted in a "hardware plus software plus service" strategy, he said.
Shih said Acer is developing a "Build Your Own Cloud" service, which he sees as a clear "win-win" proposition that will create new industry value chains, new customer opportunities and new value for its shareholders, suppliers and clients.
In the second keynote speech of the forum, MediaTek Chairman and CEO Tsai Ming-kai said that IT applications prior to 2010 were primarily designed for hardware devices, while post-2010 IT applications have been increasingly based on cloud services.
In the brief span of four years since 2010, he continued, the mobile cloud service market has exploded to hundreds of millions of users.
The current "Cloud 1.0" age is expected to end around 2020, and the "Cloud 2.0" age starting from 2020 will enable the full-spectrum roll-out of IoT applications to connect billions of devices via virtual cloud networks, Tsai said.
"Instead of offering total solutions to customers as in the past, MediaTek intends to provide some semi-turnkey solutions based on our competitive advantages in the age of Internet of Things to build a friendlier ecosystem among customers," he noted.
The Hsinchu-based company launched a day earlier at Computex Taipei a hardware and software development platform called "LinkIt" to accelerate the wearable device and IoT markets.
The LinkIt platform integrates MediaTek's Aster system-on-chip (SoC), the smallest wearable SoC currently on the market, which is designed to enable the developer community to create a broad range of affordable IoT products and solutions, according to MediaTek.
(By Jeffrey Wu; click here for coverage of this year's Computex Taipei)
ENDITEM/J
http://focustaiwan.tw/news/ast/201406040008.aspx
