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Collaboration

Taiwan and Vietnam to Jointly Develop Smart Cities

ITRI Vice President Jia-Ruey Duann and Vietnam’s Binh Duong Provincial People’s Committee Vice Chairman Tran Thanh Liem have signed a memorandum of cooperation on behalf of their respective sides to engage in technology transfer, business incubation, and talent training in the fields of “smart cities,” “LED lighting,” “startup incubators,” and “cloud data centers.” The move by ITRI is in response to the government’s New Southbound Policy and is also an effort to assist in the export of integrated service solutions for smart cities.

Dr. Duann emphasized that the development of hardware and software for smart cities has become a focus of the global technology industry, and Taiwan already possesses world-class capabilities in ICT. This cooperation between ITRI and Vietnam, he said, not only provides ITRI opportunities to demonstrate its technological achievements in smart cities and LED lighting overseas, but also enables Taiwan companies to participate in the process, which will help them to obtain footholds in the Vietnamese market. It is hoped that Taiwan and Vietnam will take advantage of this framework to expand their cooperation in technology applications, Dr. Duann remarked.

Dr. Sean S.H. Wang, General Director of ITRI International Center, commented that the talks to engage in cooperation with Binh Duong Province started in 2016. Following several mutual visits and extensive discussions, a consensus was reached to assist the Vietnamese province in becoming a testing ground for smart city technology. Dr. Wang highlighted ITRI’s prowess in smart city-related technology. Coupled with its years of experience in technology transfer and system integration, ITRI is the ideal bridge for cooperation between Binh Duong and Taiwan industry, he said, adding that ITRI in the future will coordinate with Chunghwa Telecom’s Vietnamese subsidiary in the implementation of this plan.

Representing Vietnam in signing the memorandum, Becamex IDC Corp. Chairman and CEO Nguyen Van Hung said he hopes ITRI will create a path for even more research organizations and enterprises from Taiwan to join in cooperation that will assist Binh Duong in the goal of becoming a leader in smart cities. Binh Duong, which is located an hour’s drive from Ho Chi Minh City, has a population of about 2.5 million people and is home to 800 of the 5,000 Taiwanese firms operating in Vietnam. The province shows economic growth of 13% and is actively working to be among the world’s developers of smart cities. This provides considerable potential business opportunities for Taiwan exports of ICT, IoT, and related system solutions and products.