When I was talking to some old friends from the Taiwan PC industry earlier today, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of them smile when I started giving my views on what is happening in the Android tablet market.

“This is just like the PC industry was in Taiwan twenty years ago,” one of them said with a laugh. “Hundreds of small companies entered the business making all sorts of PC and Mac clones and it took quite a few years for things to shake out as the industry matured.”

It’s been fascinating to watch leading financial analysts such as Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty scramble to adjust their forecasts and “models” for tablet market growth now that Apple is reported to have already shipped over two million units of the iPad.

Suddenly the projected overall size of the tablet market this year has risen from barely a blip to the dizzying (or should I say magical?) heights of at least ten million. What a difference a successful product launch can make.

Unfortunately I was too busy to post updates on Computex last week, but I did manage to find enough time to take a few snaps of our booth at the Taipei International Convention Center.

One of the highlights of the booth was our first ever public demonstration of the VIA Nano Dual Core Platform, combining a 1.6GHz VIA Nano DC processor with the VIA VN1000 digital media chipset.

Just a few days left before Computex, and we’re busy making the final preparations for the event.

If you are coming to Taiwan for the show, you can visit us at booth L1018 in the Taipei World Trade Center in Nangang, or Room 201D at the Taipei International Conventional Center near the Grand Hyatt.

While strolling around the streets of San Francisco and Miami on this trip, it’s been impossible to miss all the iPad ads adorning the bus stops and other public spaces with clean and elegant images showing you exactly what this “magical” device can do.

Given Apple’s undoubted leadership, what are the prospects for other companies looking at entering the tablet space? As I have been telling journalists I’ve briefed during this press tour, I believe they’re huge – not least because tablets are still a virgin market or, to borrow a phrase from Mao, “a blank sheet of paper free from any mark” upon which “the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted”.

Art Deco style reigns

Over Miami South Beach

Tourists live their dreams

Gold sunlight rises

Over blue Miami skies

Fresh sea breezes fly

 Jetlag does have its compensations.

Here are the latest additions to our range of highly durable VIA VIPRO touch screen panel PCs that we announced yesterday.

Based on the modular Em-ITX form factor, 6.5 inch VIA VIPRO VP7806 and 15 inch VIA VIPRO VP7815 are fanless and with their ability to withstand temperatures of -20 degrees C to 60 degrees C can operate in even the most extreme environments. For more information, please see the press release here.

If you’re looking for a user friendly solution for wirelessly streaming HD video from your PC to your TV, you might want to take a look at WonderMedia SmartStream, a low latency, cost effective Wireless Display (WiDi) device technology that we have announced today.

Based on the WonderMedia PRIZM SoC, SmartStream uses Wi-Fi or Ethernet to allow a user to view and control a PC on their television. Devices based on this technology are already available in Taiwan and China through HiPlus. For more information, please click here.