Taipei, May 21 (CNA) The global AI industry has entered a new phase, with growth moving from developing AI models to expanding infrastructure and real-world deployment across devices and industries, the head of the Market Intelligence Consulting Institute (MIC) said on Thursday.
The current wave of AI development is “no longer just about models” but about the broader ecosystem needed to support adoption, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Secretary Chris Hung (HKChun-hui) said at the COMPUTEX Best Choice Award ceremony in Taipei.
“AI applications are no longer limited to the cloud, but are starting to enter edge computing, end devices, and manufacturing sites,” he said.
Referring to the layered AI infrastructure framework popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), Hung said the AI ecosystem spans energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications.
AI has evolved into a “new generation of national infrastructure,” Hung said.
He added that growing AI workloads are increasing demand for servers, networking, cooling systems, and power infrastructure as data centers expand to support both AI training and inference.
Citing a forecast by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Hung said that while global shipments of AI servers will continue to increase until 2030, AI-related semiconductors are expected to account for nearly half of the total semiconductor market by 2028.
Meanwhile, the focus of AI computing is gradually shifting from cloud-based training to edge and end-user applications, and AI PCs are expected to reach a “rapid adoption stage” in 2026 as more devices will be able to run AI workloads locally, he said.
“AI has become a complete ecosystem,” said Hung, with the technology increasingly expanding into transportation, medical, manufacturing, and office applications.
He added that AI-powered Wi-Fi development is also evolving from focusing on peak speeds to improving reliability and low-latency performance in real-world environments.
Founded in 1987, MIC serves as both an industry consultant and government think tank in Taiwan under the Taiwan Information Industry Research Institute.
