Meanwhile, other companies such as Iwill, once known for its motherboards and other components, have consolidated their businesses into more concentrated fields - such as commercial servers.

There were also some big, if not surprising, announcements made. AMD launched their competitor to Intel's dual-core CPU's in the X2 series, while also showing off a PC the same size as a paperback book. ATI released their dual-card gaming solution, Crossfire, and GigaByte displayed a hard-drive built from RAM modules - meaning intensive applications such as video editing can be performed up to 60 times faster.

But all the major companies were displaying their 'solutions' for the digital home, with some companies displaying home theatre PC's, including Shuttle with a hi-fi form-factor XPC, while a company such as Philips believed the future was in streaming content from a central server or directly from the internet.

Convergence was also a focus, and how to make it more relevant. Kevin Winneroski of internet reseller Best Buy told a conference today that many companies are building convergence devices with little thought for how they would be used: "Consumers don't want convergence per se. They want simplification. The device must be able to fulfil a need, and that's why MP3 players have been so successful"

The biggest development in the next 12 months will be interoperability, Mr Winneroski told the Information Appliances Forum Asia today. "People will want to download digital TV onto their PDA and take it on the road", he said.

Computex began yesterday, May 31, and continues through till Saturday June 4, and this year features over 1300 exhibitors from Taiwan and around the world.