“According to [CEO Dave] Chapman, Transmeta’s Crusoe and Mobile
Linux combo is being adopted by the entire Taiwanese IT industry
for Web pad-type devices.”
“By a strange coincidence Taiwan’s National Science Council last
week announced that it would be investing around $650 million (US)
in order to boost Taiwan’s Internet Appliance industry over the
next five years. In the view of the NSC the IA industry is the Next
Big Thing, and the Taiwanese government intends to have the island
producing somewhere in the region of $5 billion (US) worth of them
by 2005.”
“Taiwan’s IT industry has in the past been very much driven by
government intervention, and it would appear that the latest
investment is more of the same. If the government is right, and
the initiative succeeds, then the IA business is clearly a very big
prize for Transmeta. And no doubt Transmeta already has a
couple of deals stitched up provisionally, quite probably involving
the unveiling of prototypes at CeBIT later this week.”