The world's No.2 flat-panel manufacturer, Samsung Electronics Co, hopes to give Taiwanese makers a run for their money by spending an extra US$963 million on a new flat-panel production plant.
Analysts say the investment -- and another US$53 million Samsung said back in December that it would invest in the new fab -- will keep South Korea ahead of competitors in Taiwan.
"This investment will keep the Koreans in the lead in the flat-panel industry," said Martha Chen (
LG.Philips supplied 19.2 percent of the world's flat panels in the final quarter of 2002 up from 16.8 percent in the third quarter, followed by Samsung with 17.1 percent, down from 17.2 percent, US-based flat-panel research firm DisplaySearch reported last week.
Since entering the thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) industry in 1999, Taiwan's flat-panel makers have risen rapidly to be the second largest producing nation in the world after the South Koreans, according to DisplaySearch. To compete, manufacturers have to invest continually in new technology.
"TFT-LCD panel producers have to invest in more capacity and better technology to keep competitive," said Debbie Wu (吳岱玲), a TFT-LCD industry analyst at Yuanta Core Pacific Securities Co (元大京華證券) in Taipei. "If Samsung is aggressive, Taiwan will have to keep pace to stay in the game."
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (
HannStar Display Corp (
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