COVID-Safe Touch Taiwan Back After Pandemic-Forced Hiatus

April 16, 2021 by Dave Haynes

I’m starting to get emails from PR folks making me aware of live, in-person trade shows happening in the United States, and seeing lots of social media posts from people saying they’re back to business travel, so it’s interesting to see a country that largely dodged the pandemic continuing to take the abundance of caution approach.

Touch Taiwan didn’t happen at all in 2020 but it is set for next week in Taipei, as both a live and a virtual show. The country has only had 1,067 COVID-19 cases and 11 deaths throughout the pandemic. While being an island country that can more easily control who comes in and out certainly helps, Taiwan like New Zealand has also been strict about health safety measures.

I was mightily confused by the press material, which had me thinking live event, and then thinking virtual only. But there is a specific physical location for the event, in Taipei, so I’m going with both (I asked for clarification, but didn’t get overnight). If I have this wrong, let me know!

I attended this show in 2019. The industry organizations behind the event had flown me in, along with some other overseas trade press.

It is an interesting mix of emerging display technologies, R&D demos and electronics manufacturing equipment, and the big exhibitors are the Taiwan-based flat panel guys, AUO and Innolux (Foxconn), as well as NovaStar, Lextar and Eink. It is more SID Display Week than it is InfoComm, skewed more to nerds than integrators. But I saw R&D level stuff, like 30,000 nit microLED displays, that was worth the very long flight.

For 2021:

This year, the show will launch “Smart 100+ Solutions,” aiming to build ecosystems, expand application fields and create business opportunities by integrating more than 100 competitive solutions. The exhibit area for “Smart Display and Applications” will be led by the top-2 panel makers AU Optronics (AUO) and Innolux, and other leading vendors including E Ink Holdings, Corning, Merck, GIS, BenQ Materials Corp. and Cheng Mei Materials Technology Corp. will also join forces to showcase their newest display technologies and applications.

The highly-concerned “Micro & Mini LED” exhibit area will see many first-timers including Ennostar Inc., PlayNitride Inc., Hermes-Epitek Corp., Darwin Precisions Corp., Harvatek Corp., Kulicke and Soffa Industries and Zymergen, indicating that Taiwan will play a crucial, non-negligible role in the future development of the Micro LED sector.

On the education side:

The smart display and innovative applications forum will feature the theme of “Cross-domain Development and Innovations of the Display Industry: New technologies, New Applications and New Business Models” and will explore the development prospects for autonomous driving, IoT, 8K transmission and AI algorithm technologies and provide the audience with brand-new concepts about future trends and challenges from different angles of perspectives on aspects ranging from initial development to terminal applications.

Speakers at the forum include representatives from heavyweight exhibitors such as AUO, Innolux, E Ink Holdings, Applied Materials Taiwan, Google, Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI), Faurecia Clarion Electronics, MOS Technology Inc., COHERENT Inc., and Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). At the International Micro/Mini LED Display Conference, noted experts from prominent firms including AUO, Lextar Electronics Corp., Radium Semiconductor Corp., PlayNitride Inc., Innolux, Harvatek Corp., Macroblock, Kulicke and Soffa Industries, VEECO, Zymegen, AIXTRON and ITRI will be invited to shed lights on challenges facing the industrialization of the Micro LED sector, which will spark a new wave of hot market discussions on the subject. 

Attendance is heavily domestic, but Taiwan’s tech-driven economy hinges on being a global supplier. The show now has an instant messaging function available “to help overseas buyers address travel restrictions amid the pandemic and continue exchanges with Taiwan’s top suppliers to create business opportunities.”

If you want to attend virtually, this is the registration link: https://pse.is/3ckj67

  1. Yes you´re correct it will be physical in Taipei; but mostly will only have local Taiwan folks as quarantine is mandatory when travelling there for now.

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