South Korea serves as the backbone of world’s 5G advancement, praised Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA)’s chairperson James. C. F. Huang, Thursday, at Lotte Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul.

“Korea is the first in the world to succeed in the commercialization of the 5G network services. The country is the backbone of the 5G era,” Huang said.

“I look forward to Korea and Taiwan’s collaboration in the areas of 5G, AI and IoT.”

Huang chose Korea as the only destination for his promotion of the upcoming Computex 2019 global ICT convention. The exhibition marks 39th anniversary this year. It will be held in Taiwan at the Taipei World Trace Center end-May to June.

“Some 1,700 buyers participated from Korea at Computex last year. This was the fifth largest number from all involved countries,” Huang said.

In 2018, some 1,600 firms from 30 countries had prepared over 5,000 booths at Computex. Of these, about 20 were Korean companies. Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) had prepared a Korean pavilion within the startup-focused area InnoVEX at the Computex exhibition to support and promote the nine Korean startups present that year. Close to 42,300 visitors from 168 countries came to Computex 2018, of which Korea supplied the fifth most.

This year’s Computex will discuss artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain, gaming and extended reality for five days between May 28 to June 1. Around 1,685 firms will prepare over 5,500 booths. Global firms such as Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD as well as Korea’s Samsung NEXT, Taiwan’s Asus and Japan’s Naver Line, are taking part.

Startup exhibition area InnoVEX, which is expected to showcase around 400 startups, will run for three days from May 29. A total of 11 countries will feature pavilions in the InnoVEX, including Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Canada, France, Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Brazil.

This is the fourth year Korea will feature in InnoVEX. In the previous year, a Korean startup signed memorandum of understanding with a Taiwanese augmented and virtual reality contents creator to collaborate on program development. Another Korean startup had inked an export deal with an Italian sports brand. KOTRA vowed it will hike up startup performances at Computex 2019 through thorough market analysis co-carried out with Taiwanese venture capitals.


 

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)