Clippings

ATP Electronics, a manufacturer of digital flash media products,

announced the addition of its ProMax family product line with the release

of its highest performance ProMax CompactFlash (CF) memory cards. With

speed rating at 150X, the ProMax CF card is the fastest CF card in the

market today and is specially designed to work with high mega-pixel

digital SLR cameras and video camcorders such as Nikon Digital SLR cameras

D2X, D2H, D200, D100 and D70, as well as Canon EOS series SLR cameras and

others from JVC, camcorders or Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D cameras. ATP will

showcase this new ProMax CF card product line at the CES 2006 January 5-8

in Las Vegas, at the Sands Expo # 71440.As with ATP's high performance

ProMax SD card, the newly introduced ProMax CF card is water resistant and

extremely shock resistant. In addition, the ProMax CF card also features a

22.5MB/s data transfer speed for fastest file transfers and seamless

multimedia streaming. This feature is especially required in professional

and high-end prosumer level photographic applications. The ProMax CF cards

will be available worldwide starting January 2006, in capacities from

256MB, 512MB, and 1GB to 2GB. ProMax 4GB CF will follow in by end of Q1.

Accton

decides to enter IPTV industry

Accton Technology Corporation announced that it would enter into the

new IPTV in­dustry. Its subsidiary, Arcadyan, has launched STV related

products. Arcadyan plans to increase its capital by getting Compal and

foreign IT manufacturers' participation and investment. The plan to

increase its capital is estimated to be completed in the first half of

next year. Accton's Assistant CEO, Kuo Fei-Long indicates that the

market environment for broadband is getting matured. IPTV, which transmits

multimedia content, will become the next trend in Internet environment.

Arcadyan will provide, based on its current STB platform, multimedia

network, elec­tronic business, electronic program guide (EPG), and

interactive service, as a complete set of solution to officially moving

towards IPTV market. Relative information has boost Accton's share price

in the market. It has exceeded 90 percent growth within the past half

month.

Taiwan

Companies gear up for car electronic market

According to the quarterly report of Garmin, the number 1 GPS company

in United States, the growth rate of consumer GPS product market is much

higher than the professional ones. The personal car type is taking the

biggest share in the consumer car electronic market and it will account

for 46 percent of the whole consumer GPS market in 2008. Taiwan companies

are targeting at this good business opportunity and aggressively preparing

for car electronic market - especially for INPAQ technology Co Ltd in the

upstream and Mitac International Corporation in the downstream. According

to the industry insiders, INPAQ currently is not only providing GPS

antenna to Mitac, but also have obtained certification from the leading

car company Mercedes-Benz and gone ahead with the production. UBS Funds

pointed out that Mitac is using ODM to enter car-assembling market through

the local Japan GPS company.

Kuro

launched own branded MP3

Kuro has launched the first own braded MP3 on Dec.

22. This product would be distributed in PC home and company official

web-site that also announced to cultivate personal consumer market after

the launch. The new debut of MP3 from Kuro is equipped with 512MB memory

at the price of NT$3,888 per piece with one year free Kuro membership.

With the bundle of software and hardware, Kuro avoided the direct

competition with other MP3 products on the market and developed a new

business model for the own branded MP3. This MP3 model was OEMed by Compal.

In terms of target market, Taiwan would be the first place to launch. In

the future, China would be the next target market when European and

American markets were still looking for partners.