Taiwan recognized its most innovative manufacturers yesterday, with President Chen Shui-bian (
The 10th National Awards of Excellence (
Among the 20 finalists, four were awarded with the gold medal, including Power Quotient International Co's (
PHOTO: CETRA
While the remaining 16 companies were awarded with the silver medal, the four gold medal winners yesterday celebrated their success in creating "innovalue" -- innovation and added value -- to their winning products.
"Winning this award is a recognition of our capabilities in designing customized and market-oriented products," Power Quotient's general manager Jance Lu (
The company's pocket-sized disk reader is a revolutionary solution that offers patented built-in flash disk with high performance, he said.
Steve Chang (
"It took us a team of 10 R&D professionals and six months to come up with such the design and innovation," Chang said.
The gold award, moreover, reinforces a winning image and international competitiveness, said Pete Chen (陳榮輝), president of Unitech's Automatic Data Collector Business Group.
Among this year's 660 entries, 35 percent were information technology-related products, 16 percent are consumer electronic products and 11 percent were telecommunication products. A third of the winners were first-time participants, including the four gold award winners
Advantech Co (研華公司) and Giga-Byte Technology Co (技嘉科技) representatives said the award has helped to attract more orders.
Chen Ho-an (
"Clients have asked us to customize the phone to meet the needs of their local markets," Chen said.
The award has also helped to change the company's image from that of an industrial computer maker to an advanced Internet application product provider, he said.
Winners of Taiwan's excellence awards will be allowed to place the excellence logo on the casing and packaging of their products, as well as on their advertising and promotional campaigns.
In late May, 12 of the finalists' products will be showcased in the arrival area of CKS International Airport.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day