Made in Singapore marvels

Motorola, for instance, has long had a design centre with 240 engineers based in Singapore. It develops mobile phones for the Asia market while Hewlett-Packard produces printers in Singapore, including those which are wireless and work via Bluetooth or infrared ports.

The world's largest hard disk drive manufacturer, Seagate Technology, will be making one-inch drives in Singapore, starting in the third quarter.

The big boys are not the only ones active in the gadget market.

The ThumbDrive, an external storage device the size of your little finger which is used with computers, was 'born' here.

Trek 2000 International, an engineering design house formed in 1989, says it was the first company to unveil the product at the 2000 CeBIT Hanover in Germany, the world's largest high-tech trade fair.

'We had at first been experimenting with MP3 solutions when some of the engineers thought we could cut out all the traditional cables to plug in the device directly,' said Trek 2000's business development director, Mr Kuan Mun Kwong.

The company has since progressed from the 8-megabyte ThumbDrive to devices that have gigabytes of memory and come with security features such as password locks and biometric fingerprint scans, or lifestyle features such as audio players and built-in cameras.

Sales figures are unavailable but Mr Kuan said several global information technology companies have commissioned the company to produce these devices under their brand names.

Another Singapore company which has tasted success is Raynet Technologies, a design company formed in 2000. Its first product - the world's first programmable pulse massager that can be connected to a personal digital assistant (PDA) - received top reviews from more than 100 magazines and newspapers worldwide when it was launched in collaboration with Handspring in the US in 2001. The unusual product has two parts: a battery pack and a 'brain' component, which can be slotted either into the battery pack or into the back of a Palm PDA. Since its launch, 'a few thousand' of the massagers have been sold worldwide, said Raynet's managing director, Mr T.C. Pang.

'We never intended to produce just for the Singapore domestic market,' he said. 'To be competitive, we need to produce for the global market, and to do that, you have to have a world-class product.'

In order to find good employees that 'fit the work culture at the company', he personally headhunts possible candidates with a few senior managers.

Singapore is not devoid of talent, he said, but 'due to our small population, the size of our nation and the highly structured system, there is less opportunity for innovation'.

'Singaporeans need to change their mindsets to take risks and venture into the unknown,' he said.

Mr Gurcharan Singh, the chief financial officer of Trek 2000, thinks more Singaporeans would be encouraged to explore their creative sides if there was more intellectual property protection. 'It is fortunate that Singapore is developing its intellectual property infrastructure, but it needs to be policed and enforced very firmly so others have an incentive to show their potential,' he said.

EDB's Mr Chua said Singapore is 'well-positioned' as a country to embrace innovation because its labour force has the required market knowledge and technical competency.

He said: 'Singapore has always been strong in utilising financial, physical and human assets.

'Now, we must make full use of our intellectual assets so that we can diversify as an economy and have a bigger capacity to create value.'

Source: The Straits Times