Taiwan's Proton Electronic Industrial Corp (普騰) said yesterday it was forming a digital television joint venture with China's No.3 computer maker, Tsinghua Tongfang (清華同方), to tap into the world's fastest-growing TV market.
Proton, a leading TV brand in Taiwan, is scheduled to sign an agreement with the Beijing-based computer vendor on Thursday to sell its own-brand digital TVs to Chinese households, Sylvia Lin (
"We hope the new entity will start to operate some time soon," Lin said. She declined to comment on a Chinese-language media report that the deal was worth US$20 million.
She said the two sides had initially agreed to sell TVs under the joint brand of Tsinghua Tongfang Proton, giving Proton access to the world's most populous market.
The new venture is expected to ship the first batch of TVs during the first half of next year from a factory in Hanzhou, Lin said. The factory will be able to produce 3 million sets a year.
China has become a priority market for Proton and its Taiwanese rivals such as Sampo Corp (
Sampo signed an agreement with Haier (海爾), China's largest home-appliance maker, in February 2002 to sell each other's products and to respect each other's original equipment manufacturing ventures.
"Proton's move is the latest by local TV makers to aggressively expand to overseas markets, especially China," said Helen Chen (
The demand for flat-screen TVs in China is expected to hit 2.05 million this year, or one-fifth of the global demand of 10 million units, according to a research report released by the Taipei-based Topology Research Institute (
The growing demand for high-resolution TVs is a result of Beijing's plan to start extensive digital broadcasts by 2010, the research house said.
Tsinghua Tongfang's move comes following announcements by its bigger rival, Legend Holdings Ltd (
Taiwanese TV makers have been the top choice for Chinese PC makers and home-appliance vendors, but local companies had been reluctant to work with Chinese firms before.
"Now the situation has changed as those Chinese brands have evolved into big names in the TV sector," Lee said.
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
RSS