News

Taiwan OEMs Need To Get On Board With Big Data: Oxford Professor

Taiwanese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) need to start gaining access to big data if they wish to remain competitive in the coming years, or risk getting left behind, a big data expert said Wednesday.

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, an Oxford University professor and co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, made the remark at a big data forum in Taipei when asked how local OEMs can take advantage of the big data trend.

To illustrate his point that OEMs need to get on board with big data, Mayer-Schonberger mentioned the example of an automobile company in Europe that was able to gain the upper hand over one of its suppliers due to the former’s access to big data collected from sensors in its cars.

On one occasion, after big data analysis, the company discovered a problem with one of its car components. However, instead of telling the supplier the problem–and having the supplier fix the problem for free for all of the car company’s competitors–the company came up with its own solution and patented the solution, Mayer-Schonberger said.

As a result, the supplier not only had to give a discount to the company, but had to pay a license fee for every part it produced for the company’s competitors, he said at the forum organized by 30 Monthly.

“In other words, you need to think very quickly how you can play a role in the data flow, not just the monetary flow.”

Tony Chen, chair and CEO of Migo, a big data analytics marketing company whose partners include Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said that one of the problems he sees is a lack of data scientists in Asia in general.

The supply is not matching demand, and big corporations such as Alibaba and its rival Tencent are grabbing all the talent, he said at the forum.

He predicted that more companies like Migo will emerge in the future to help companies make data-driven decisions

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top