■ Gift and stationery show opens
The Taipei International Gift and Stationery Spring Show is scheduled to open its doors today at Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall and runs through Sunday. The organizer, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會), said the four-day exhibition has attracted 533 exhibitors, 16 of which from abroad, to occupy some 970 booths. To create a sophisticated image for the trade show, TAITRA said it has set up an Inno-Products Gallery to showcase innovative products from 19 companies. In addition, two seminars will be held today and tomorrow to discuss, respectively, nanotechnology in arts and commercial applications and to analyze the US retail market. Buyers and businesspeople can get free entrance with their business cards, TAITRA said.
■ ABN-AMRO launches new card
ABN-AMRO Bank yesterday launched a "super platinum" credit card, offering benefits including six months of interest-free installment payments on transactions charged to the card. Other benefits include interest-free micro-loans of up to NT$100,000, up to 10 percent in cash rebates on revolving interest and free parking. With a client base of 880,000 cardholders, ABN-AMRO hopes to achieve 50 percent growth in its number of cardholders, increasing it to 1 million by the end of this year, the bank's country business manager, Jim Brown, said. The bank has few cardholders, ABN-AMRO senior vice president Martine Tseng (曾淑芬) yesterday said that the bank boasts the spending per account of as much as nearly NT$5,000 per month. Tseng yesterday estimated that approximately 50 percent of the bank's new credit-card applicants would be granted the super platinum card and over 20 percent of current cardholders would be upgraded should their credit performance warrant it.
■ Cellphone output up 24%
Taiwan's output of cellphones will reach 55.3 million units this year, representing a 24 percent increase over last year's level, according to a report by the Industrial Tech-nology Information Service (ITIS) -- a project funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The output volume will account for 11 percent of the global cellphone market, the ITIS report forecast. Since the beginning of this year, key parts and components suppliers have been unable to meet demand, forcing manufacturers to adjust labor divisions and market deployment strategies for the second half of this year, it said. Taiwan put out NT$34.32 billion (US$1.04 billion) worth of cellphones in the first quarter of this year, down by 6 percent from the fourth-quarter value of last year but up by 44 percent over the previous year's Q1 level, it reported.
■ Sony bid makes AU No. 1
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) has become the nation's largest supplier of screens for flat-panel TVs after getting new orders from Sony Corp, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. AU Optronics shipped 50,000 TV panels measuring about 20 inches diagonally last month, exceeding the 30,000 TV screens shipped by Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美 電子), previously the country's biggest supplier, the report said. Strong demand for screens used in televisions and personal computers helped Hsinchu-based AU Optronics ship a record 1.47 million screens last month, the paper said.
■ NT dollar falls
RSS