■ Yuan conversion begins
Taiwan for the first time yesterday allowed people on the offshore islets of Kinmen and Matsu to convert Chinese yuan and the local currency, despite lingering hostility between the two rivals, officials said.
The state Bank of Taiwan's (台灣銀行) offices on Kinmen and Matsu, two fortified island groups near China's southeastern Fujian province, kicked off currency conversion businesses yesterday, the bank said.
Under the new policy, both Taiwanese and Chinese travelling through the two islands are permitted to convert up to 20,000 Chinese yuan (US$2,476) each trip.
The bank did not specify the amount of money converted on the first day of the new measures -- unveiled last month -- with the local currency and the renminbi trading in a range of 4.039-4.199.
Exchange of the two currencies on the main island of Taiwan is still banned.
■ Broadcom buying local chips
Broadcom Corp started ordering microchips from United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) this year in a bid to ensure stable supply, the Commercial Times reported, without saying where it got the information.
Broadcom now buys 45 percent of its chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), with the partnership expanding into chips that use so-called 90-nanometer advanced technology, the Taipei-based newspaper said.
Chipmakers can make more chips per silicon wafer by shrinking chip sizes and helping to cut costs.
Irvine, California-based Broadcom, which supplies semiconductors used in consumer electronics, is the third-largest US semiconductor maker.
■ BenQ plans new mobiles
BenQ Corp (明基), which took over Siemens AG's mobile-phone unit yesterday, will make further "changes" to the business that may include "expansion, but also cuts," BenQ Chairman K.Y. Lee (李焜耀) told Welt am Sonntag in an interview.
BenQ Mobile (明基行動通訊), its new business group dedicated to wireless communications, officially started operations last Saturday.
It is "clear that changes are necessary", the newspaper quoted him as saying in an e-mailed summary of an article for tomorrow's edition.
Lee expects that the first phone model jointly developed by the German unit and its new Taiwan-based parent company will be ready by next year's Cebit trade fair in Germany, the newspaper said.
The company is seeking to produce at least 30 new models annually, it quoted him as saying.
BenQ Mobile is allowed to utilize the Siemens brand for 18 months as well as a combined brand for a transition period of up to five years starting Oct. 1. Both brands will coexist until 2006.
■ NT dollar still stable
Taiwan's central bank reiterated its view that the island's currency is "relatively stable," after the Taiwan dollar fell for the first day in three yesterday.
That was the third time recently that the Central Bank of China has said it believes the Taiwan dollar is stable compared with other currencies.
The bank issued a table that compared the Taiwan currency's 0.17 percent drop against its US counterpart yesterday with the yen's 0.55 percent decline and the euro's 0.53 percent fall.
Taiwan's currency dropped NT$0.058 to close at NT$33.246 against the US currency, according to Taipei Forex Inc.
The Taiwan dollar fell to NT$33.325 earlier, its lowest level since Nov. 4, 2004.
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