Flights to South Korea restored
Taiwanese airlines launched regular flights to South Korea yesterday after a 13-year halt over a diplomatic row.
Taiwan banned South Korean planes from flying to the island in 1992, after Seoul cut diplomatic ties and recognized China instead.
Taiwan and South Korea signed a new aviation agreement last September, paving the way for yesterday's restoration of regular flights.
China Airlines (華航) will fly between Taipei and Seoul, while UNI Airways (立榮), a division of the rival Evergreen group (長榮), will travel between Kaohsiung and Seoul.
China Airlines said it would raise its weekly number of flights from seven to nine, beginning on March 28. UNI Airways plans to inaugurate scheduled flights between Kaohsiung and Jijou from March 29.
Currently, about 300,000 Taiwanese passengers visit South Korea every year, while about 150,000 Korean passengers visit Taiwan, China Airlines said.
Man charged over data
A San Jose man was indicted Monday on charges that he illegally funneled the proprietary property of a Silicon Valley semiconductor company to a competitor in Taiwan.
Shin-Guo Tsai, 35, is accused of e-mailing sensitive information from Fremont, California-based Volterra Semiconductors Inc, where he was an engineer, to CMSC Inc (益芯科技) of Taiwan.
A bail hearing was set for tomorrow. He faces a maximum 10-year prison term if convicted, and a US$250,000 fine. He is accused of the foreign transportation of stolen property. FBI agents arrested him on Sunday night at his San Jose residence.
The data in question related to the "design of high-performance analog and mixed-signal power management semiconductors for the computing, storage, networking and consumer markets," the government said. The authorities said they found the data on Tsai's computer.
TSMC's says utilization to rise
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's (TSMC, 台積電) factory use will exceed 80 percent in the second quarter because customers have eliminated excess inventory, a Chinese-language business daily reported, citing unidentified company officials.
TSMC, the world's largest supplier of made- to-order chips, on Jan. 27 said it expects to use 78 percent of its capacity in the first quarter. The company didn't forecast second quarter factory use at the time.
The outlook for the second half this year is still unclear, the report said. The industry's excess inventory of chips may be eliminated by the second half, the company said in January.
Orders from customers such as Texas Instruments Inc failed to keep pace with TSMC's expansion in the fourth quarter last year, reducing factory use to 88 percent from capacity a year earlier.
Japan's DVD market strong
DVD recorders shipped in Japan more than doubled last year and will likely see another strong year as the technology gets cheaper, a research house said yesterday.
The forecast comes ahead of the introduction expected later this year of next-generation DVD players, which promise to open up a new range of features for consumers despite two rival and incompatible formats.
The MM Research Institute said Japan saw growth of 110 percent in DVD recorders shipped last year with 4.03 million units.
By value, shipments rose 53.5 percent to ?218 billion (US$2.0 billion), indicating lower retail prices -- which in turn helped fuel sales.
The MM Research Institute forecast shipments to increase another 34 percent this year to 5.4 million units.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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