Handset production soars
Taiwan shipped out 10.52 million handsets in the first quarter this year, up 138 percent from a year earlier, on the back of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd's bid to boost its worldwide market share, the Market Intel-ligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心) said yesterday.
Sony Ericsson, the world's No. 5 cellphone maker, saw its global market share fall from 6.7 percent in 2001 to 5.5 percent last year.
But the MIC remains cautious, saying that handset shipments by Taiwanese makers may drop 11 percent to 9.34 million units in the second quarter if firms don't boost research and development into more innovative handsets, especially those with color screens, Java software and multimedia messaging services.
Bail-out expected to sting
The bail-out of the debt-ridden Chung Shing Commercial Bank (中興銀行) is expected to cost government coffers nearly NT$100 billion, Gary Tseng (曾國烈), director general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs, said yesterday at the legislature.
Tseng told lawmakers that Chung Shing has a liability of NT$140 billion, with approximately NT$90 billion of which being in impaired assets. Against this backdrop, Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) yesterday urged lawmakers to approve the ministry's proposal to increase the Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金) to NT$908 billion. He said that, with a little over NT$40 billion left after delivering a series of rescue packages to ailing grassroots credit cooperatives, the fund is unable to deal with Chung Shing and other ailing banks.
Congressman seeks trade deal
A US congressman has come up with a concurrent resolution demanding that the US President George W. Bush administration negotiate a free trade agreement with Taiwan, the US State Department reported in a press statement released on Wednesday.
According to the press release, Republican Jim Ramstad presented the resolution on March 18 for screening by relevant committees of the House of Representatives, with 29 other House members having endorsed the resolution as of April 14.
The resolution notes that Taiwan is America's eighth largest trading partner and that it was formally admitted to the World Trade Organization on Jan. 1 last year.
Chungwa shares go on sale
Taiwan will offer 1.33 billion shares in the nation's largest telecommunication operator Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) in the fourth quarter, a local newspaper report yesterday, citing Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san (林陵三).
The 13.5 percent stake includes 334.17 million shares left unsold from the ministry's latest offer of 500 million shares which ended on Wednesday, the paper said.
Infineon may renew old ties
Infineon Technologies AG, the world's fourth-largest maker of computer-memory chips, said it may renew a venture with ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), a local newspaper reported, citing Loh Kin Wah, president of the German company's Asia Pacific operations.
Infineon may not sell its remaining 25 percent stake in ProMOS, which it has reduced from 30 percent since January, Loh said. Infineon last year ended technology and purchasing agreements with the Taiwan company in a dispute over rights to ProMOS's output.
NT dollar remains strong
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday maintained its strength against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.019 to close at NT$34.778 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$488 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained