The Mobile Device Innovation Platform Trend Discussion Forum invited a number of IT industry heavyweights and executives from major enterprises to discuss the innovation trends of mobile devices as well as the dynamics of Taiwan's IT industry. The forum sought to provide a direction for the development of Taiwan's IT industry.

In the evolution of computer input devices, the keyboard and mouse have been considered our good friend almost since the beginning, while the rise of portable devices such as PDAs, Pocket PCs, and Microsoft's Tablet PCs also brought about attempts to introduce a "stylus" as the basic input device. But after Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, the "touch" method has shined as the primary input method for today's mobile devices. However, using fingers to input data, write, take notes, and draw have always lacked a certain accuracy and realism. Therefore, stylus manufacturers still have something to say.

Supported by a number of different interfaces and standards, flash memory can be custom-designed for a variety of applications. Earlier designs mostly adopted the parallel bus architecture. However, demand for lighter and thinner mobile devices has been prompting the industry to simplify flash interfaces. Serial designs have enabled smaller-size flash memory with lower pin counts, and there are even mixed NOR-NAND designs. These have helped simplify the PCB layout, reducing costs for applications targeting the embedded market. The NAND flash manufacturing process may be approaching its limits, but Macronix has demonstrated its R&D strengths with new-generation memory technologies, such as PCM and ReRAM.

Apple chose Corning's cover glass when looking for a scratch-resistant material for the screen of its first-generation iPhone. The success of iPhone prompted other manufacturers to adopt the same glass material, allowing Corning's cover glass to become a mainstay for touch-enabled electronic products. Corning has since developed even better scratch- and damage-resistant glass products.

The performance of notebooks relies on major components such as the CPU, memory, and the hard drive (HDD). Thanks to the advance in semiconductor processes, the first two components mentioned have become increasingly faster. That leaves only the last component, or the HDD, that cannot break through its speed bottleneck due to being based on mechanical parts. This forces the system to have to wait for hard drive access during the operating system boot-up or accessing a large volume of data, which reduces efficiency. Although HDDs can be replaced by pricier SSDs, manufacturers nonetheless have offered several solutions that not only reduce costs while providing large-capacity and high-performance; it can also make the price of notebooks more competitive as well.

Microsoft's Windows 8 platform has launched a new computer era of touch screen control. However, the cost of touch-control notebooks remains high and can only provide a 2D control experience - equivalent to that of a tablet - and cannot provide more intuitive somatosensory control. Microchip Technology, a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions launched its newly patented GestIC technology in November of 2012, which provides a wide range of new motion control technologies for an assortment of current computer terminal applications. Using the non-contact gesture control user interface, the 3D computer control experience is realized.

Cloud and mobilization trends in recent years have triggered the third industrial revolution. The hot selling tablets have also accelerated the computer industry's introduction to a wide variety of tablets or transformer (tablet + laptop) products. Functionality of tablets has also gradually evolved from mostly entertainment functions into commercial application productivity features. These features have prompted the industry to develop faster processor performances and larger storage capacities. The leaders in flash memory production have responded to the future development trend of the tablet industry by accurately grasping the speed acceleration demands of mobile terminal devices to provide a full range of flash memory solutions.