A government decision to fine households whose air conditioners drip water has boosted sales in air conditioners, according to retailers and company executives.
Promotions of the home appliances starting in February and the recent high temperatures have also resulted in a rising number of units sold, they said.
Starting June 1, the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) will use Article 27 and Article 50 of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) to impose fines of between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000 on violators if their air conditioners are found to drip water, which is deemed as pollution.
Kolin Co (歌林), a leading manufacturer of consumer electronics, has extensively run television commercials this year to promote the nation's only drip-free models, aiming to tap the market when consumers mull buying a new AC unit.
"The [government's] order has really helped push up sales of our patent model," said Kolin manager Steven Chen (
Chen said Kolin's drip-free window-mount models were selling at a rate 60 percent higher than the same period last year.
Around 1 million air conditioners are sold in the nation per year, Chen said.
Tsann Kuen Group (
Chang Yueh-lung (
But another retailer denied the connection, saying that it was not the decisive factor in boosting sales.
"Boosted by various kinds of promotional activities -- from installment payments, free installation to prolonged guarantees -- all the well-known air conditioner brands have been selling well," said Sarah Wu (
Wu said all the air conditioners can be made drip-free, as long as they are installed properly and connected to a run-off pipe, and therefore not all the orders have to be placed with Kolin's products.
Joanna Lee (李嘉惠), the marketing manager of LG Taistar Electronics Taiwan Co, agreed, saying that a conspicuous drawback has been detected in the drip-free models manufactured by their major rival.
Since fans have to be installed inside to evaporate water condensation, a lot of noise is caused, which is more difficult to resolve than dripping.
"Therefore, I don't see that Kolin's products especially outshine others," she said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS