Expo attracts more exhibitors Big companies rule the roost at annual computer show as dotcoms become 'dotgones'
2001-05-30
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International Computer Expo 2001 has drawn a record number of exhibitors - 407 against last year's 393 - despite a small number of international brands and fewer Internet start-ups.
"It's a good figure," said event manager Stella Fung Ching-han.
The 17th annual event ran from last Thursday to Sunday and was open only to the information technology (IT) trade for the first two days, before being thrown open to the public.
The event was forecast to draw more than 80,000 people, against last year's 78,000. Members of the public eager to load up on free gimmicky gifts and lucky draw prizes had to pay HK$ 20 for the privilege.
The big booths included major printing and imaging companies such as Canon, Epson, Ricoh and Sony, but the major computer-makers were lightly represented by Acer and others.
Last year, space was taken up by Internet and e-commerce software companies for small to medium-sized firms, but this year, it was a different tune as the dotcoms turned into dotgones after the technology market tumble. The few left were represented by online stockbrokers such as Hutchison CSFBdirect, Boom
.com and Cash On-line.
Industry giant Microsoft was on hand and "pre-launched" its new version of the Office XP suite. The official release is scheduled for this Thursday, but the firm was happy to start the hype a little earlier to give the Hong Kong public a peek.
Microsoft had a huge, white booth and the best part was a computer game where you could shoot rubber bands at the frequently maligned office assistant "Clippy" and tie him up in knots.
The Pacific Century CyberWorks stand had a display of pastel robot fish and jellyfish floating in a water-filled tank. A new feature was the mobile commerce conference "m-Business Discovery Day", which was held for the second time this year but for the first time in conjunction with the expo.
The Government's acting director of IT services Cheng Yan-chee urged companies to take advantage of the potential of m-commerce because Hong Kong had a handheld-phone penetration rate of 78 per cent and good wireless infrastructure.
"According to recent industry research, 60 per cent of Internet users will go online using mobile devices by 2005. However, only 7 per cent of companies worldwide now have Web sites that are accessible by these devices. You can see a huge business potential there," he told about 200 people, who had paid HK$ 300 each to listen.
Asia managing vice-president Michael Chan of GartnerConsulting said while mobile devices were good for communication, they had proved less useful for business purposes thus far.
In Hong Kong, m-commerce existed, but was not fast, convenient, reliable or widespread enough for consumers, said Mr Chan and fellow experts during the one-day conference.
Wireless industry experts agreed the issues of speed, cost, security and an all-in-one unit had to be solved before the public could easily use a handheld phone or personal digital assistant to check e-mail or surf the Web. In the long run, it was likely business-to-business uses would outweigh business-to -consumer efforts.
"I would say more of the money-making process lies in the (business-to -business) versus the (business-to-consumer) area," Mr Chan said.
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