Excellence in IT Products

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a renowned British think tank, recently announced the results of a global study of IT industry competitiveness. Based on the study, Taiwan’s IT industry rose to second place from sixth place in the previous year out of a total of 66 nations included in the study. The report noted that the country’s rise in the rankings owed mainly to its strong performance in R&D, particularly regarding patented technology.

Taiwanese companies account for about three-quarters of the world’s production of PCs and half of the world’s LCDs. In addition, Taiwan makes about a quarter of the world’s semiconductors and about a fifth of the world’s mobile phones.

Taiwan also boasts firms that are among the world’s leaders in products that save energy and reduce carbon emissions. These include companies making light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells, both of which were among the fastest growing segments in Taiwan’s ICT industry last year.

The country has the world’s second largest LED industry with about a quarter of the world market. LEDs reduce energy consumption by emitting light from a chip rather than an incandescent filament in a light bulb or charged gases in a fluorescent light tube. LEDs use about a tenth of the energy of an incandescent bulb and can last a decade or longer.