Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co Taiwan Branch intends to increase the number of staff at its Product Development Center (PDC) by 50 percent before the end of next year, in line with the center's expanding scale, company executives said yesterday.
"We plan to increase our numbers to 240 staff at the center by next year," said Ted Clark, HP senior vice president and general manager of the mobile computing unit, who flew to Taipei to attend the center's third anniversary celebration yesterday.
Set up in September 2002 with 24 employees, the center has now expanded to 160 staff. Of this, local hires account for 75 percent, an increase from 12.5 percent three years ago, HP said.
As one of HP's global PDCs, the center aims to integrate suppliers directly in the product design process and develop products together to meet the needs of markets in different regions. Analysts said the center has also helped cement supply-chain relationships between local contractors and HP.
HP's major local original design manufacturing (ODM) partners include top notebook assemblers Quanta Computer Inc (
The center has managed to slash the product development cycle for consumer notebooks to between six and nine months from the previous 12 months, said Jessica Chong (
The center, which started off by developing consumer notebooks, industrial standard servers and commercial laptops, has added handheld devices and consumer desktops to its operations in the last two years.
"The consumer laptop business is the largest revenue contributor among other product lines in the PDC," Chong said.
She refused to give a breakdown of numbers.
All of its Pavilion and Presario consumer notebook brands are developed entirely in Taiwan, marking the significance of the center in HP's consumer notebook segment, she said.
Over the past three years, 50 new products and 36 notebook platforms were churned out by the center.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure