Hong Kong Flights cut back
China Airlines Co (華航) was filling between 50 percent and 60 percent of its seats last week on its flights between Taiwan and Hong Kong, compared with the usual rate of between 60 percent and 70 percent, spokesman Roger Han (韓梁中) said yesterday.
The airline, which flies between Hong Kong and Taiwan 16 times a day, has cut one or two daily flights on average because the SARS (sever acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak is deterring travelers, Han said.
Lower demand because of the disease and the war in Iraq hasn't prompted the airline to change its schedule for taking delivery of new planes ordered or leased this year, Han said. It expects to take delivery of three Airbus planes and three Boeing 747-400 freighters later this year, he said.
Intel cancels Taipei event
Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, has canceled an upcoming event in Taipei over fears about SARS, the company said yesterday in a statement.
The Intel Developer Spring 2003 Forum was scheduled to take place on April 14 and 15 with 1,500 delegates attending.
"In response to customers' concerns over SARS, the [forum] format will change from holding single large events in each city to presenting technology update content and press announcements through a series of smaller briefing activities over the coming months," the statement said.
The remaining three conferences of the spring 2003 forum in Tokyo, Bangalore and Berlin are continuing as planned through the end of this month.
Economy healthy, Yang says
While the current economic conditions look very poor following the war in the Middle East and the spread of a killer respiratory disease, Yang Ching-lung (楊金龍), director-general of the central bank's banking department, said there's no reason to become too pessimistic.
The Council for Economic Planning and Development forecast yesterday the nation's economy may suffer NT$10 billion in loss if the disease continues to drag on, but Yang dismissed the council's prediction as too early to tell.
Yang also said the bank has no plans to cut interest rates at the moment. The bank which matched the US Federal Reserve's 11 rate cuts last year, left its key rediscount rate unchanged, at 1.625 percent, after its quarterly policy meeting on March 20. The bank had said every one-percent reduction in rediscount rate would help generate 0.11-percent growth in the nation's gross domestic product.
Auto sales up
Auto sales in the first quarter increased 4.1 percent from a year earlier as Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), Kuozui Motors Ltd (國瑞汽車), China Motor Corp (中華汽車) and Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (福特六和) rolled out new models to lure more customers.
Overall unit sales between January and March rose to 95,400 cars, with Yulon leading the race for 20,912 cars, according to statistics provided by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Yulon assembles and distributes autos for Nissan Motor Co.
The runner-up Kuozui, which assembled autos for Toyota Motor Co, distributed 18,326 cars in the first quarter.
The company hopes to sell 9,000 cars in April with the introduction of new Vios sedans, accounting for 27 percent share of domestic market for the month.
NT dollar falls again
The New Taiwan dollar continued to lose ground against its US counterpart yesterday, losing NT$0.03 to close at NT$34.798 to the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$420 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