Taiwan Cellular to launch 3G
Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大哥大) said yesterday it plans to launch its third-generation (3G) telecom services in the second half of this year, as required by the government.
"We expect such services after the middle of this year," company president Harvey Chang (張孝威) told reporters.
"Our equipment and network for third-generation telecom services are in place," company chief technology officer David Clarke said.
However, Chang said the timing of the launch still depends on whether handsets, content and consumers are ready for such services.
"Our technology is ready, but we have to see whether handsets and content are ready ... the most important is whether consumers are ready [to use such services,]" the president added.
The company plans capital expenditure of NT$5.1 billion (US$162 million) this year, of which half will go to 3G, company senior vice president and chief financial officer Cheng Hui-ming (鄭慧明) said.
Capital expenditure last year amounted to NT$4.6 billion.
Bad-loan ratio down slightly
The nation's bad-loan ratio, including loans under surveillance, fell slightly to 3.78 percent in January from 3.8 percent in December and 4.52 percent in November, according to statistics released by Financial Supervisory Commission on Tuesday.
As of the end of January, banks had non-performing loans of around NT$587.9 billion, down from December's NT$591 billion.
The nation's 52 credit-card issuers in January also reported a 0.57 percent bad-loan ratio while the nation's 34 cash-card issuers posted a 0.798 percent bad-loan ratio, the commission added.
First Financial outlines criteria
First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), a state-controlled lender, yesterday outlined criteria for any merger with an eye on lifting the company's return on equity and assets, a Chinese-language business daily reported citing Chairman Steve Shieh (謝壽夫).
Potential candidates should be able to lift First Financial's return on assets to 1.25 percent, from 0.85 percent last year, and to enhance its return on equity to about 20 percent, from 13 percent last year, the newspaper reported, citing Shieh.
First Financial, Taiwan's fifth-largest financial-services provider, had a 3.6 percent drop for the fourth-quarter profit of NT$1.8 billion (US$55.8 million). The figure was derived from subtracting nine-month figures from unaudited full-year profit released by the company on Jan. 10. Fourth-quarter profit for 2003 was NT$1.9 billion.
FSC to open offices abroad
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will open offices in New York and London in July and December this year, FSC Chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝) announced on Monday.
The FSC will also step up its pace to push the domestic financial market to go international and make Taiwan into a world fund-raising and capital management center, Kong said.
Kong made the announcement during classes on Taiwan's financial management, investment and challenges at National Taiwan University and National Chengchi University.
The leading five banks in Taiwan only enjoy a combined 37 percent stake in their home market, even lagging well behind the 73 percent boasted by the leading bank of Indonesia and the 68 percent of Thailand's most prominent bank, Kong said.
Therefore, the commission vowed to provide sound banks with greater incentives in the second half of this year to help them move swiftly in that direction, he added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained