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Scott Stein/CNET
TAIPEI, Taiwan — While the venerable Computex trade show has been increasingly focused on mobile for some time, the huge influx of wearable technology is a real surprise this year. The show doesn’t start until tomorrow, but the opening International Press Conference today held some very interesting facts and figures.
Computex 2014 will see 49 exhibitors showing off wearable computing technology on the show floor, with 79 mobile products also being demonstrated.
While 49 is certainly a drop in the ocean at a show as vast as this, it’s still a significant push from the wearables space into what has been a very traditional computing show.
Similarly, Thursday will see the Digitimes Wearable Tech Summit take place here. That’s a full day of talks from people working in the space, from hardware manufacturing, to business applications through to user interface design.
Arguably it echoes the changes seen at Mobile World Congress. Not too far in the distant past, MWC was a show where people came to talk about telecommunications infrastructure — not the consumer devices that used it. These days, it’s the hot spot for new handsets to be revealed to the world.
Certainly we’ll see a lot of desktop and laptop excitement in Taipei this year. But if you’ve been thinking wearable devices were a mere flash in the pan, this should be a wakeup call.
We’ll be covering the specifics of the wearables on show as Computex formally begins on June 3 in Taipei.
