■ TAIEX edges down 0.4 percent
Shares fell yesterday as investors exhibited caution ahead of local elections over the weekend. The TAIEX dropped 23.65 points, or 0.4 percent, to 6,179.82, on turnover of NT$80.47 billion (US$2.39 billion). The New Taiwan dollar slid NT$0.047 to close at NT$33.563 against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Lower steel prices in the face of oversupply also played a part in yesterday's stock market drop, traders said. China Steel Corp (中鋼), the nation's largest steel producer by revenue, led decliners and was the heaviest traded stock on the mainboard. China Steel's shares fell 3 percent to close at NT$24.35.
■ Ya Hsin to borrow US$97M
Ya Hsin Industrial Co (雅新), the world's third biggest printed circuit board manufacturer, is borrowing US$97 million to expand production in Suzhou, China. Ya Hsin hired Japan's Mizuho Corporate Bank's Taiwanese subsidiary, to arrange the loan, which will be marketed mainly to Chinese lenders, bankers involved in the deal said. The five-year revolving credit will be signed today in Suzhou, the bankers said.
■ Nokia expanding in China
Finnish mobile telephone giant Nokia Oyj will increase its production of mobile telephones in China to meet growing demand, the company said yesterday. The expansion was aimed at providing "more capacity and flexibility to meet the growing market demand worldwide, especially China and Asia," Nokia said. The production will be located at Nokia's facility in Dongguan, China. The expansion will begin during third quarter 2006.
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