In June, Taipei bursts to life with more than 100.000 westerners coming to Computex Taipei, the seocnd largest ITC trade show in the world. The overall number of visitors trounces CES in Las Vegas. As of this year, Computex Taipei will be held at two separate venues: The gap will be bridged via shuttles – and WiMax connectivity.

Computex Taipei is growing at a scary pace and it isn’t unreasonable to expect a chaos of CES proportions: Every year, CES reveals the limits of hotel room and transportation capacity in Las Vegas.  Walter Yeh, chairman of the organizer TAITRA told media that using shuttles between the two exhibiting places should not be a major issue, since they will offer WiMAX connectivity. Given the fact that Intel's Montevina+WiMAX attack is happening only in late June, we wonder how will that go. However, we also heard that the first WiMax-equipped Mobile Internet Devices will be available at Computex, so make sure to add such a small PC to your basic show equipment, if you are heading to Taiwan.

The new exhibition hall doubles the overall showfloor space, so you can expect a lot of new companies. The number of companies increased by 50%, and you can expect 4482 booths offering an almost limitless number of gadgets and tech products. Adding to that are “showrooms” in the haunted Grand Hyatt Taipei hotel (it is built on ground of a former graveyard).

Unlike the CES organizer CEA, TAITRA does not mind if companies are renting hotel rooms to present their products. After all, the main purpose of Computex is raking in about $20 billion in initial orders signed at the show, followed by about $50 billion of follow up orders. In terms of overall value signed, Computex Taipei rivals some aircraft shows, which are known to be the biggest ordering parties.

Both Humphrey Cheung and myself will be travelling to Taipei to bring you the latest news from the place where most of your electronics equipment was created.

You can view videos from the press conference here, here, here and here. Courtesy of our friends Peter and JP from GlobalPR.