■ UK trade mission approaches
A group of nine senior executives from eight British companies is scheduled to arrive in Taipei on Monday for a five-day trade mission to meet with local business organizations, agents and importers, a statement from the British Trade and Cultural Office said yesterday.
The group is expected to explore trade and investment opportunities in the agricultural machinery and earth-moving equipment, books and standing order services to academic and professional libraries, machine component, as well as high and ultra-high pressure water jet equipment for industrial cleaning and cutting.
Separately, the Taipei Office of Investment in France Agency said it is organizing a French logistics seminar on Feb. 16 in Taipei.
A French customs specialist and representatives from three regional development agencies of northern France are scheduled to speak at the event, the office said in a statement.
■ PC sales up 9.5 percent
Sales of personal computers in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, rose 9.5 percent last year to 29.7 million units with Lenovo (formerly Legend) of China the top-selling brand, research house Gartner said yeseterday.
Lenovo had 9.5 percent of the market, selling 2.835 million PCs last year for a gain of 15.1 percent, it said in a report.
US computer giant Hewlett-Packard was ranked second with 2.707 million PCs sold, giving it 9.1 percent of the market, which was followed by IBM with 1.96 million units, Dell with 1.762 million, and Acer with 1.193 million, Gartner said.
■ Aerospace firm gets new head
The Cabinet yesterday appointed Tony Sun (孫韜玉), a retired army lieutenant-general to be the chairman of the state-run Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (漢翔航空), Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) announced yesterday.
The company's former chairman, Huang Jung-teh (黃榮德), resigned last September.
Sun, 61 years old, graduated from the Armed Forces University and Wayne State University, has held the positions of vice commander-in-chief of the army, vice minister of national defense and chief of the defense ministry's arms bureau.
■ Far Eastern to fly to Daegu
Far Eastern Air Transport Co (遠東), a local charter airline, will operate two weekly flights to South Korea for the next four weeks as travel demand between the two Asian countries increases.
Starting tomorrow, Far Eastern Air will fly between Taipei and the southern city of Daegu until March 12, South Korea's Ministry of Construction and Transportation said in a statement.
■ Walsin to buy Eden
Walsin Technology Corp (華新麗華), the nation's second-largest maker of parts that control the flow of electricity in electronic products, will buy the 70 percent of Eden Technology Corp (一等高科技) that it doesn't own to cut costs.
Walsin Technology, a maker of parts that store electricity temporarily, will pay one share for every 2.36 shares of Eden Technology on August 1, the company said in a statement.
Walsin Technology will pay 15.4 million of its shares for 36.3 million Eden Technology shares, valued at NT$435 million (US$13 million).
■ NT dollar keeps gaining
The New Taiwan dollar continued to gain ground against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.046 to close at NT$33.149 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$1.39 billion.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by