China Mobile Chairman Xi Visits Taiwan's IT Industry Heads Over IOT Cooperation

China Mobile Ltd. Chairman Xi Guohua recently visited top brasses of Taiwan's high-profile  information-technology (IT) companies to discuss reportedly  cooperation on Internet of Things (IOT).

Xi flew to Taiwan to preside over the Global TD LTE Initiative (GTI), a TD LTE 4G wireless technology forum spearheaded by his company and held on Sept. 16 in Taiwan for the first time, prior to which the event had been held in Shanghai and Barcelona.

The senior executives Xi visited included Chairman Morris Chang of the foundry provider Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Chairman and Chief Executive Officer M.K. Tsai of the chip design house MediaTek Inc., Chairman Douglas Hsu of the telecom service provider Far EasTone Telecom Co., Ltd., and Chairperson Cher Wang of the handset maker HTC Corp.

TSMC declined to elaborate on Xi's visit to the foundry provider.

Local industry executives see less benign intent behind the visits, that Xi plans to build high threshold to widen the lead over  competitors on Internet of Things (IOT) by setting up supply chain related to the three key elements: chipmaking, chip design, and service provision.

Also they think the meeting was held in Taiwan because China Mobile has mostly relied on Taiwan's manufacturers for  various telecom-technology development projects, and Xi plans to invite Taiwan's manufacturers to join his company to set transmission standards for  fifth-generation wireless communication in preparation for its involvement in IOT.

Industry executives say 4G  transmission capacity is too slow to realize the goal to wirelessly connect everything on the Internet.

At MediaTek, a major supplier of wireless chips in China, Xi learned the design house's present plan in 4G, smartphone, IOT, wireless recharging, and wearable device markets.

At Far EasTone, Xi and Hsu discussed strengthening cooperation on 4G, mobile e-commerce, content, and enterprise service as well as learnt FarEasTone's plan to converge the Frequency Division Duplexing Long-Term Evolution (FDD LTE) and Time Division Long-Term Evolution (TD LTE) networks. (KL)