■ Construction firm fined
The Fair Trade Commission yesterday punished a Taipei County-based construction company, Hua Yu (樺昱). It was fined NT$200,000 for conduct that violated Article 24 of the Fair Trade Law (公平法), the commission said in a statement.
"In asking consumers to pay a house deposit before providing contracts for them to examine, Hua Yu have ... violated the Fair Trade Law," the commission said.
The commission said it was unfair for customers not to be granted a five-day review period prior to paying a deposit or signing a contract for the pre-sale houses. Customers should have their deposits returned if they disagreed with the contract, it added.
■ AU launches new logo
The nation's largest manufacturer of panels for flat-screen computer displays and TVs, AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), launched a new corporate logo at its headquarters in Hsinchu yesterday.
The company's logo has been changed from "au" in large lower-case letters above the word "optronics" in green to three large uppercase letters "AUO" in a blue-green mix.
"With the announcement of our new [logo], our customers and investors all over the world will have a simple, direct, and in-line channel to us," president Chen Hsuen-bin (陳炫彬) said.
■ Chunghwa stands by chief
Lu Shyue-ching (呂學錦), president of Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信), offered to resign after legislators accused him of being obsessed with his position but the company's chairman rejected Lu's offer.
Legislators on Monday criticized Lu for being infatuated with his job, claiming he "wouldn't let it go," the company said in a statement, without naming the legislators.
Lu immediately offered to resign. Chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) rejected his offer, the statement said.
The chairman did not plan to change the management, it said.
■ TSMC sales up
Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said quarter sales ending last month rose 5.3 percent from the previous quarter to NT$57.78 billion (US$1.71 billion) due to a continued rise in shipments. The volume marked a jump of 40.4 percent year-on-year, said TSMC, the world's leading contract microchip maker.
"The increase largely resulted from the sustained rise in our shipments to customers prompted by strong global demand," a company official said.
TSMC's sales last year rose 25.4 percent to a record-high of 201.9 billion from NT$160.96 billion in 2002, a company statement said.
Sales last month stood at NT$18.97 billion, up 2.5 percent from November, adding 67.2 percent from a year earlier, the company said.
■ Most firms invest in China
Over half of local companies listed or trading over the counter on the Taiwan stock exchange have invested in China, Securities and Futures Commission chairman Ding Kung-hwa (丁克華) told lawmakers at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
Ting said the companies had invested a total of NT$300 billion (US$8.82 billion) in China as of the third quarter of last year.
He said that 436 Taiwan-listed companies have invested in China, while 235 of the more than 400 companies trading over the counter have done so.
■ NT dollar firms slightly
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday showed no signs of weakness against its US counterpart, edging up NT$0.012 to close at NT$33.797 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$595 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
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