China stakes innovation claim at CommunicAsia

COMMUNICASIA, SINGAPORE--Eleven IT firms hailing from Beijing's own Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun, arrived here and created a hotbed of Chinese innovation at CommunicAsia. ZDNet Asia visits some of the booths to find out what they are showcasing this year.

An employee from IGRS Engineering Lab shows off one of the functionalities of its wireless transmission set. She is able to mirror the content within her smartphone onto the television set using the dongle, which is plugged into the device.

Unlike Wi-Fi streaming, there is no lag time between an action on the phone and what is displayed on the TV, said Xu Luxi, the company's international promotion manager.

Beijing-headquartered Vimicro is a fabless chip company that designs chipsets for PCs and mobile phones. Showtone's Henry Fei, whose company manufactures tablets using chips from Vimicro, demonstrates its phone-tablet hybrid device.

Fei said Showtone is an original design manufacturer (ODM) and original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Its customers in the region include India's HCL and telco BSNL.

Haier Mobile, the mobile division of Chinese consumer electronics maker Haier, is situated besides Huawei Technologies at the show floor.

A representative of the company said its major markets include Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, where the company's CDMA phones are popular.

An employee from TechFaith demonstrated the hardiness of its Titan handset by hammering a nail into a block of wood. Behind him, in the fish tank, is another Titan device submerged in water.

An executive said its mobile phone targets users in the oil and gas, military, sports as well as agriculture industries.