GTrusted
Taiwan is the world's source for many of the chips we use in today's electronics and most of the PC notebooks are designed in Taiwan. Lately it's been more difficult for Taiwan's electronics industry as the growth has shifted to buying smartphones and related chips which have become increasingly dominated by Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc. that use less of Taiwan's development and manufacturing resources compared to the previous PC era.
Unfortunately for Taiwan electronics shoppers, despite their general tech savviness, suffer from a few disadvantages compared to shoppers from US and China mostly because of Taiwan's relatively small market size. Taiwan shoppers have to deal with much higher prices and don't get products when they are first released. There are much less online shopping options with near instant delivery with large players like Amazon and Taobao shipping from outside Taiwan. Finally, many of today's new cloud basic streaming services or smartphone apps aren't available in Taiwan.
In the past, Taiwan shoppers had to travel overseas to get a great electronics retail shopping experience but the new SynTrend Tech Mall in Taipei changes all that. It's paradise for gadget lovers but still don't expect the same great deals that you would get from a Amazon in the US.
On the ground floor of SynTrend, there is a great place for promotional exhibitions. On this day, there was a promotion of a Taiwanese online game complete with people dressed up in traditional Chinese garb.
Ever see a retail store by Intel before? Given how Intel is dominant in the PC centric electronics industry in Taiwan, it's no surprise that Intel has their own showroom at SynTrend. Here they were promoting their RealSense gesture sensing technology and showing off all the computers that use Intel.
Samsung's store was all about promoting their new Gear S2 watch in attempt to reverse their declining wearables sales after Apple's introduction of the Apple Watch.
In the Sony Store, there was a lot of promotion of the new 4K capable Xperia Z5 and Bravia 4K Android TV's. There wasn't a lot of people looking at TV's but there was strong interest in the Xperia phones.
Sports oriented wearables and action cameras were also a big theme with most of the major brands like GoPro, Garmin presented in different sections of the mall.
Taiwan based HTC, once the world's largest manufacturer of Android phones before Samsung took over, also had their store in SynTrend. Although they had well designed and reviewed phones, they just didn't have the same worldwide marketing muscle that Samsung and Apple enjoyed. Unlike Samsung and Apple, HTC chose to invest in action cameras like the HTC RE and decided not to do their own wearables. Instead HTC uses local Taiwan partners like i-GatU to develop wearables to sell with HTC's phones.
Perhaps reflecting the state of the PC industry, most PC centric stores like Acer, Asus, and MSI had decidedly less people inside.
Remember InFocus as just making projectors? In Taiwan, they have heavy promotion of their new line of smartphones. Seems like everyone has their toes dipped into the smartphone market.
SynTrend also has a large area dedicated to more professional camera and video professionals including this 4K production camera with Thunderbolt from from Blackmagic Design based out of Australia.
Of course with all these electronics recording videos and photos, you need a way to store them. SanDisk showed off their iXpand Flash Drive and Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0, but interestingly enough didn't have their new Dual USB Drive Type-C product. Taiwan based PQI also had a strong showing of their mobile drives.
Sony promoted their professional XQD cards used in high end cameras from Nikon while Toshiba showed off their high performance SD UHS-II cards as well as SD cards for NFC and wireless connections. Sony had a wide range of USB flash drives but while they had some advertising over their new USM-SA3 OTG drive for mobile phones, they didn't have any actual units on display.
Other memory card makers like Taiwan based Transcend have decided to also go after the car camera market, which is popular in Taiwan to help record who is at fault during car accidents.
Generally it's difficult to find Google Chromecast sold in Taiwan but not here at SynTrend. They were still only selling the older Chomecast 2013 model.
A lot of the retail action goes on in the Taiwan telecom stores of Taiwan Mobile, Chunghwa Telecom, and FarEasTone. Here they sell a wide selection of selection of popular phones and accessories including the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Gear Fit.
If you want to see what electronics shopping was like before SynTrend, you can go next door to the Guang Hua Digital Plaza which is still popular for DIY'ers and those that enjoy the art of price haggling. The stores here are a lot more generic and smaller where everyone seems to sell similar items. Like everywhere though, they days of mom and pop electronics stores are probably numbered with retail increasingly dominated by online shopping and branded retail showrooms.
