Korean’s Central Government also said that it will invest 9 trillion Won (US$7.65 billion; US$1=1177 Won) this year into the Digital New Deal, a 8.3 trillion Won (US$7 billion) project kicked off in 2020, with an aim to foster key digital technologies such as AI, metaverse, self-driving cars, and smart factories, the Yonhap News Agency reported on February 13. Of the total 9 trillion Won, Korean’s Ministry of Science and ICT said 5.9 trillion Won (US$5 billion) will be allocated for AI-related technologies such as self-driving cars and smart factories; 800 billion Won (US$679.7 million) for hyper-connected industries such as metaverse and cloud services while 34 billion Won for the development of new metaverse platforms in this February; 500 billion Won for virtual reality applications, including remote education and telemedicine; 1.8 trillion Won for the digitalization of network infrastructure.
In addition, the Ministry recently also announced that it is set to spend 129.8 billion Won (US$108.2 million) on data projects in 2022 to facilitate local SMEs to develop new data products and services through the distribution of data vouchers.
Taiwan has played a key role in the global IT industry for several decades and its global share in the networking equipment industry has reached 16.1% in 2021. As the increased capital expenditure is anticipated to provide further impetus to the global networking equipment industry in 2022-23, the Taiwanese networking equipment industry’s shipment value is estimated to grow 6.4% year-on-year to NT$890 billion (US$31.7 billion; US$1= NT$28.1) in 2022, according to MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute). MIC is a major government think tank and one of the leading IT research institutes in Taiwan.