Acer Chairman Stan Shih stated that in facing this new competitive playing field, IT firms will do bst to quickly embrace the concept of open cloud computing platforms and the coming age of the IoT. Acer, he said, is shedding its former focus on hardware manufacturing to adopt an integrated cloud technology model rooted in “hardware + software + service”.

“Cloud is destined to happen anyway. It's an inevitable trend,” Shih said during his keynote speech at the forum. Furthermore, he shared how Acer drew inspiration from the Confucian spirit of “kingcraft” to develop its “Build Your Own Cloud” service. Acer sees this forward-thinking technology as a clear “win-win” proposition that will create new industry value chains, new customer opportunities, and new value for shareholders, suppliers, and clients.

MediaTek Chairman Tsai Ming-kai said that on the coming era of Cloud 2.0, while IT applications prior to 2010 were primarily device-centered, post-2010 applications have been increasingly cloud-centered. He continued, the mobile cloud service market has exploded to hundreds of millions of users.

“Our current Cloud 1.0 age, is expected to end around 2020 with Cloud 2.0 and the full-spectrum rollout of IoT applications will connect billions of devices via virtual cloud networks.” Tsai added. “Instead of offering total solutions to customers as in the past, MediaTek intends to provide some semi-turnkey solutions based on our competitive advantages in the age of Internet of Things to build a friendlier ecosystem among customers,”

However, MediaTek launched a day earlier at Computex Taipei a hardware and software development platform called “LinkIt” to accelerate the wearable device and IoT markets.

The LinkIt platform integrates MediaTek's Aster system-on-chip (SoC), the smallest wearable SoC currently on the market, which is designed to enable the developer community to create a broad range of affordable IoT products and solutions, according to MediaTek.

Last but not least, the two addressers pointed out that fundamental changes in today's global high-tech industry are accelerating trends toward full software-hardware integration in every aspect of the ICT sector. These changes have their epicenter at the confluence of Social Media, Cloud Computing, Mobile Communications, and the IoT.