Lawmakers agree Diageo ban
Taiwan's lawmakers yesterday passed a resolution 115-100 demanding the Cabinet ban sales of Diageo alcoholic beverages for one year after the UK drinks group ran controversial commercials in London subway stations Dec. 16.
The UK company suspended the commercials days later.
Lawmakers said the Diageo commercial had damaged the image of Taiwan as it implies that the nation's products are shoddy and that its customer service is poor.
Norway last year also temporarily revoked Diageo's license to sell alcohol after the firm breached a ban on alcohol promotion, they said.
The resolution also asked the government to take legal action against the company, which distributes popular products such as Johnny Walker Red Label and Johnny Walker Black Label and J&B whiskey in Taiwan.
3Com sues D-Link
3Com Corp, the world's third-largest maker of computer-networking equipment, said it sued smaller rival D-Link Systems Inc (友訊科技), accusing it of using 3Com's patented technology without permission.
The dispute centers around D-Link's network interface card products and whether they rely on Ethernet patents owned by 3Com, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement.
"These patents are the result of 3Com's long history of leadership in the field of computer networking, starting with its founding by Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe in 1979," said Don Drinkwater, the company's director of intellectual property licensing. "3Com will vigorously defend" its patents "to the full extent of the law."
D-Link, based in Hsinchu, with US headquarters in Irvine, California, makes communications equipment. Cisco Systems Inc and Nortel Networks Corp outrank 3Com in sales of networking gear.
Businesses urge tax freeze
Leading businessmen urged the government not to increase the business tax at a time when economy is still slow, a local newspaper reported, citing Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), chairman of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會).
The Ministry of Finance recently carried out a feasibility study on the possibility of hiking the business tax rate to 7 percent from the present 5 percent to help balance the government's budget deficit over the next five to 10 years, the paper said.
At a breakfast meeting held Thursday with Vice Premier Lin Hsin-yi (林信義), Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) and Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫), Huang suggested that the government should also reduce or revoke the commodity tax.
Honda raises production
The world's top motorcycle maker, Honda, said yesterday it would sharply step up production in China and India this year in a bid to increase its share of the fast growing markets.
The Japanese company, also a major car maker, will boost its motorcycle production in China this year by 50 percent to 1.5 million units, a Honda Motor Co spokeswoman said.
Honda has an 8 percent share of China's booming motorcycle market and hopes to boost this to 30 percent by 2005 by winning customers in rural areas, she said.
The firm will also increase production in India by 24 percent to 2.3 million motorcycles this year, according to the spokeswoman.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.035 to close at NT$34.594 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$418 million, compared with the previous day's US$570 million.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts