UMC seeking Motorola order
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) may get orders from Motorola Inc next year for processor chips used in the US company's mobile phones, the DigiTimes Web site reported, without saying where it obtained the information.
Motorola on Monday said it will shed its semiconductor unit in an initial public offering and spinoff, freeing up money to invest in its mobile-telephone operation and stem three years of market-share losses to Nokia Oyj.
Motorola planned to stop placing orders with UMC in the second half of the year, Motorola senior vice president Bill Walker said back in March.
Ten Motorola factories worldwide now make and package chips, down from 29 three years ago. The company will outsource more production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) this year, Walker said.
Chinese Petroleum seeks cargo
Chinese Petroleum Corp plans to buy 30,000 tonnes of heavy naphtha for delivery next month, a company official said.
The company is seeking the car-go for delivery to Kaohsiung port, said the official, who asked not to be identified. Bids to supply the naphtha will close on Tuesday and must be valid until next Thursday. Heavy naphtha is typically processed at a refinery's reformer unit into gasoline blending components.
Hon Hai's sales jump
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the country's biggest electronics company by revenue, said sales last month rose 62 percent to NT$36.6 billion (US$1.1 billion) from a year ago.
The company had sales of NT$22.6 billion in September a year ago and NT$33.6 billion in August this year, according to its statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Tokyo Electron posts loss
Tokyo Electron Ltd., the world's No. 2 supplier of equipment to the semiconductor industry, said it had a narrower-than-expected fiscal first-half loss, aided by an increase in spending by customers.
The group net loss at the Tokyo-based company totaled about ¥11 billion (US$101 million) in the six months ended Sept. 30, widening from a ¥2.5 billion loss in the year-ago period but better than the company's ¥17.5 billion loss forecast. Sales totaled about ¥220 billion, 5 percent better than the ¥209 billion the company forecast in April.
Tokyo Electron's earnings prospects may improve further as chipmakers, especially suppliers of made-to-order semiconductors such as Taiwan's TSMC and UMC, begin to place new equipment orders in the January to March period next year, analysts said.
`Forbes' revives China rich list
Forbes magazine plans to publish its "rich list" of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs for the first time since 1999 this month, a statement from the magazine's Singapore office said.
"For more than 20 years, Forbes annually and on schedule has been publishing lists of the wealthiest Americans and subsequently also the world's billionaries. Drawing from this experience and authenticity, Forbes Global will be doing the same again this year with its ranking of China's most successful business people at the end of this month," editor Tim Ferguson said in the statement.
Forbes first published its list of the richest Americans about 80 years ago and published its first rich list for China in 1995. This year's China Rich List will be the magazine's third such a list.
Singapore's economy rebounds
Singapore's economy rebounded in the third quarter following a sharp SARS-led contraction in the second, officials said yesterday. Quarter-on-quarter growth of 15 percent reversed an 11 percent downturn in the second quarter.
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