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.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
About 1,000 participants, including more than 200 venture capitalists, joined the Taiwan Demo Day in Silicon Valley on Saturday, the largest iteration to date of the event held ahead of Nvidia Corp’s annual GPU Technology Conference which runs from today to Thursday. Taiwan Demo Day, co-organized by the Taiwan Next Foundation and the Startup Island Taiwan Silicon Valley Hub, took place at the Computer History Museum in California, showcasing 12 teams focused on physical artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic AI technologies. Katie Hsieh (謝凱婷), founder of the Taiwan Next Foundation, said the event highlighted the strength of the Taiwan-US start-up ecosystem, with
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
RSS