■ Government spending in control
The government has succeeded in controlling its annual expenditure at a level of around NT$1.6 trillion (US$50.3 billion) in recent years, saving an average of NT$70 billion in government spending annually, a senior budgetary official said yesterday. Speaking at a weekly Cabinet meeting, Hsu Jan-yau (許璋瑤), head of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), said the achievement has been reflected in Taiwan's ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global rating on government expenditure control. Taiwan ranked 13th in last year's WEF global rating in terms of government expenditure control, moving up seven notches from the previous WEF rating. According to Hsu, the government began to adopt a package of measures in 2001 to improve budgetary efficiency by controlling government expenditure and cutting wasteful spending. Through concerted efforts of all government agencies, Hsu said the ratio of government expenditure to the nation's GDP declined from 17.3 percent in 2001 to 15.2 percent last year.
■ SDK to up hard disk production
A Japanese technology giant plans to increase production of hard disk media across its three plants in Singapore, Taiwan and Chiba, Japan, a Showa Denko KK (SDK) spokesman said in a published report yesterday. SDK, one of the world's largest manufacturers of disks for hard drives, is injecting S$183 million (US$111 million) to expand capacity, Yoshiyuki Kusanagi told the Straits Times. He declined to disclose how much of the investment will be allocated at each facility but said the expansion of capacity in Singapore will be completed by March next year. SDK intends to increase production of hard disk media by a total of 3.05 million disks a month across the three plants, Kusanagi said.
■ Lenovo, Elitegroup may ally
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), China's largest personal computer maker, may forge an alliance with Taiwanese motherboard maker Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (精英電腦) to explore the server motherboard market, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The report said Lenovo may transfer its design technology to Elitegroup and help the latter establish motherboard production lines for servers. Elitegroup would also help market the server boards through its distribution channels, the paper added.
■ Siemens workers protest
Siemens AG workers in China are protesting against the German engineering company's plans to cut staff at the local mobile-phone unit, WirtschaftsWoche reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The workers are protesting against the Munich-based engineering company's plan to cut more than 100 of the 2,000 Chinese jobs in marketing and sales operations of the handset business, the magazine said. Workers staged protests outside Siemens's Chinese headquarters in Beijing, the magazine said. BenQ Corp (明基) plans to take over Siemens's unprofitable handset business later this year.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar dropped for the first day in three as the Japanese yen's 0.6 percent slide today raised concerns that the nation's central bank will sell its currency to maintain the competitiveness of its exporters. The NT dollar dropped NT$0.086 to close at NT$31.979 against the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$735 million.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six