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Sweden's telematics match Taiwan's wireless technology(China Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) During a Sweden-Taiwan business seminar held in Taipei on June 8, the Swedish delegation led by Sony Ericsson's former chairman Kurt Hellstrom introduced a new term -- "telematics" -- to the meeting. It's a combination of telecommunications and automobiles -- the two most globally competitive sectors in Sweden. While it looks new to Taiwan, telematics has been growing in the Nordic country as a natural convergence the telecom and automobile industries. Hellstrom commented that broadband is an irreversible process during which everything will be eventually networked. With its strength in the telecom industry, Sweden has taken the lead to boost convergence among various telecom sectors. The latest examples in Sweden were live commercial convergence in June 2005, and IMS and multimedia convergence in spring of this year. Hellstrom predicted the convenience of use among telecom sectors would speed up the combination between telecom and automobiles to create the new sector of telematics. Shortly after retiring from his position as the chairman of Sony Ericsson, Hellstrom assumed the chairmanship at another Swedish company. The "Invest in Sweden Agency" focuses on software design and solutions, which he said should play an even more important role amid the growth of the new telematics sector. Hellstrom also serves as the chairman of Swedish-Chinese (Taiwan) Economic Cooperation Committee, a Swedish counterpart of the Chinese (Taiwan)-Swedish Economic Cooperation Committee under the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association (CIECA). The two committees under the CIECA take turns to hold annual joint business meetings in their respective countries. Convergence of all aspects Hellstrom believes that telematics wouldn't be involved with the convergence of technologies only, but also the operations of suppliers, services of vendors, and the habits of consumers. In other words, it needs packaged solutions to deal with the overall changing business environment. Teddy Huang, senior vice president and CTO of Taiwan Mobile, echoed Hellstrom, saying that Taiwan is also seeing a growing integration among the wireless technologies, which has created wide attention due to the massive market potential of the emerging auto-electronics sector. While speaking at the opening ceremony of the meeting, Huang noted that wireless telecoms is one of the most competitive sectors of Taiwan's industry, sustaining considerable annual growth thanks to the steady increase in market demand. "Taiwan and Sweden should be good partners in this field," he said. Staffan Sjogren, vice president for North East Asia Region of Scania, was another speaker at the seminar, where he introduced a new concept of trucks and bus electrical systems due to the growth of auto-electronics. "Under the new concept, the architecture admits an increase of functions and the possibility of future integration of new subsystems in a modularized way," he stressed. "It's possible to make a diagnosis and to maintain the system on the after sales market in an efficient way," he added. Logistic office functions, he pointed out in particular, will become a part of the operations of the vehicle where it makes on-board vehicle diagnostics of functional data, information faculty functions, time for next services and so on. Road safety system Scania, which has a history going back all the way to 1891, is one of the oldest established heavy vehicle manufacturers in the world. Amid the emerging trend of telematics in its home country, the century-old automaker has been striving to apply advanced telecommunications technology and know-how to help promote road safety systems inside the vehicles. In recent years, it's active in cooperation with EU and UN WHO and devoted much effort to promote road safety around the world. Henrik Bystrom, representative of Swedish Trade Council in Taiwan, recommends road safety as a field of great market potential worthy of closer bilateral cooperation between Taiwan and Swedish companies in light of the strong IT industrial background of these two countries. "Swedish automakers have been engaged in developing road safety systems which won't be used for Swedish vehicles only, but are also applicable to automobiles made in other countries," he said, in the belief that the concept of road safety will be increasingly emphasized by automakers while advanced telematics technology is under development to expand and integrate the functions of a car driver. Currently, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), electric apparatus, motorcars and medicaments were the three largest items of imports from Sweden to Taiwan in 2005. In the same year, the three major staples of Taiwan's shipments to Sweden were screws and bolts, bicycles, and computer peripherals. Bystrom sees bright prospects for bilateral trade in telematics and other related fields. However, Bystrom observed an interesting phenomenon of the widening discrepancy between the official bilateral trade statistics compiled by Taiwan and Sweden. Bilateral trade in the first quarter of this year, for example, recorded a decrease in Taiwan, but a growth in Sweden. Comparatively, the Swedish government saw a decline in the bilateral trade of last year while the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taiwan reported an annual growth of 8% or so for 2005. "It may result from the different calculation formulas applied in the two countries," the Swedish representative said. He would like to talk with MOEA officials to find a means to narrow the gap between the trade statistics of the two countries. The discrepancy has existed for years. Bystrom has not taken action to solve it because what most concerns him is the substantive bilateral relationship rather than the figures on paper. |