A lack of talented workers is the major problem facing the opto-electronics industry, and the government should take measures to deal with the situation, industry leaders and local government officials said recently.
They reached the consensus at a seminar held in Tainan County, where the Southern Taiwan Science Park's (
Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (
Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (
Su called on the Ministry of Education to increase the number of higher learning facilities in the south to train people for the industry in the face of strong competition from South Korea and China.
The optoelectronics industry has replaced the semiconductor industry as the most popular with local high-tech staff, the 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said last week.
The nation's major flat-panel display makers, such as AU Optronics Corp (
But the industry still has a shortage of 20 percent to 30 percent of the qualified manpower it requires, which could amount to as many as 10,000 engineers this year, according to Rocky Yang (
The output value of the nation's optoelectronics industry is projected to grow to NT$838 billion (US$24,741,659,285) this year, a 26 percent jump from NT$664.6 billion last year, and the figure is expected to exceed NT$1 trillion in 2006, according to figures provided by the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Industrial Development Bureau.
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