Held together with CGOverdrive2008 and inter-government and industry meetings such as the imbX Ministerial Forum and the regional seminar on digital terrestrial television broadcasting, the event saw the demonstration from more than 2,300 exhibiting companies from 61 countries and regions demonstrated products and solutions throughout the value chain of convergent technologies.
Over four days, visitors witnessed cutting-edge technologies and business solutions designed to enhance enterprises’ mobility and users’ lifestyles. Samsung chose the show as a platform to launch a new touchscreen smartphone - the i900 Omnia – globally. CommunicAsia also saw the launch of a new QWERTI slider mobile with the LG KS360, which showed off its bright red colour keypad with a dash of black exterior as well.
Yahoo pushed to solidify its position in mobile advertising and search with a series of new deals in eight Asian countries and territories. During CommunicAsia 2008, Yahoo also announced localised versions of its Go 3.0 voice search technology for India, Southeast Asia and Australia.
The NAVTEQ Global Location-based Services Challenge was held for the first time in Asia Pacific. NAVTEQ gave away over $4.5 million in cash prizes and data licences. Grand prize winner Joikusoft walked away with a prize package valued at $275,000.
“We delivered a robust and relevant event this year with the strong support and representation from our exhibitors – both market leaders and emerging enterprises. Exhibitors in the WiMAX, IPTV and mobile entertainment segments have responded strongly to the ever-increasing role of technology in our lives. These clusters have grown substantially and attracted good crowds at the show,” said Stephen Tan, chief executive, Singapore Exhibition Services (organisers of the exhibition) and president, Allworld Exhibitions Alliance.
Tan added, “The shows this year have met exhibitor expectations and about 78 per cent of them have already committed to participate in 2009. With their backing, we are confident that CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia will continue to be a key highlight on the ICT and media industry calendar in Asia.”
A key highlight at BroadcastAsia2008 was the NHK exhibit, which showcased for the first time in Asia outside of Japan, the Super Hi-vision (SHV) system.
Panasonic unveiled the world’s first 6X Write-Once Blu-ray discs (BD-R) which have a maximum data transfer speed of 2165Mbps and said to be 20 per cent faster than that of 16X DVD-R discs. |
