SARS has forced Taiwanese firms to increase their reliance on doing business over the Internet, making online transactions, videoconferencing and e-mail more pervasive after the disease disappeared in the summer, officials said yesterday.
"After the impact of SARS earlier this year, the Internet became an indispensable tool for Taiwanese businesses," said Huang Wen-rong (黃文榮), director of the Internet department at the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA). "We still had to carry on with business even though travel was limited, so the Internet and video-conferencing increased. After SARS receded [in June], these became regular business channels."
CETRA's own Internet-based trading site, TaiwanTrade.com.tw, which lists over 120,000 products from more than 10,000 local companies saw a 20-percent increase in transactions in the period from April to September this year as a direct result of SARS, Huang said.
PHOTO: AFP
The threat of manufacturing plants being closed by SARS has forced companies to outsource to more partners in order to spread the risk of a break in their supply chain, said Simon Lin (
"You don't know what's coming next -- today it's SARS, tomorrow who knows what?" Lin told reporters at a press conference to launch a new online computer trade show in Taipei yesterday.
The show, Computex Online (www.computex.biz), was created in May by the Taipei Computer Association (
But Taiwanese companies need to do more business over the Internet, or risk losing out to competitors, a senior government official warned yesterday.
"Facing a global economic downturn, international trade conditions are touchy, therefore it is essential for Taiwan IT companies to get used to the e-business environment ? to stay competitive," Director-general of the Bureau of Foreign Trade Huang Chih-peng (
A positive side effect of increased Internet business is cost savings.
"Business to business transactions over the Internet shorten the sales channel and so save costs," said Waldo Yeh (葉益成), chairman of consultants Expense Reduction Analysts Taiwan Ltd (ERA, 中華毅業). Winning customers through Internet marketing also saves on expensive print media advertising, he added.
In a survey conducted by US-based research firm Gartner Inc in the summer, the average American company could save US$10 million in annual costs by putting more services on the Net.
The average company sends out 75,000 paper bills at US$5 each month, while Web-based bills cost only US$2 each. That adds up to an annual saving of US$2.7 million if all bills are sent via the Web, Gartner reported. Redirecting invoice-related telephone calls to a company's Web site saves a further US$3.2 million.
Not all Taiwanese businesses are taking advantage of the Internet. Last year, just over 60 percent of companies in Taiwan were doing business over the Internet, and only 36 percent had Web sites, according to George Wei (
Some low-cost suppliers may also be shy of using the Web.
"At ERA we have a global on-line tendering system, but it is not always a success," Yeh said. "Some more traditional suppliers give us the best prices, but don't like to use the Internet."
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