To forge a name for a successful branded business, Taiwanese companies should continue its lookout for global talent and innovative ideas, an industry watcher said yesterday.
"In this era where specialized division of labor counts, Tai-wanese firms should change their mindset to recruit more global talents for both local and overseas offices," said Cynthia Chyn (秦素霞), deputy general director of the Taipei-based researcher Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心).
She talked with the Taipei Times after delivering a presentation at the third Annual Global Connect Meeting and Partnering Forum yesterday.
According to Chyn, Taiwanese firms are well known for their ability in integrating applications and putting them into commercialization, a niche which helped make a name for the nation in the global contract-manufacturing scene for the past 20 years.
However, as more firms are turning into brandname business for higher margins and international visibility, they should beef up their international talent pool as foreign expertise in branding is key to success, she said.
"Taiwanese vendors are good at meeting clients' requirements for product manufacturing. But they should expand their market reach to segments such as after-sales or customer service," she said.
This will enable them to understand real customer needs, which will in turn stimulate creativity and increase profitability in the long run, she said.
According to Chyn, moving production offshore to China will definitely expand the landscape to a larger extent.
Taiwanese firms, however, are gradually losing their cultural-proximity advantage in China, she said, so they should run businesses there and amend strategies proactively based on domestic conditions.
"Overseas investments in China have marginal profit margins with an annual growth of only 0.7 percent to 1 percent," Chyn said, adding that this is a result of identical cost structures which makes most companies lose their competitiveness.
Higher rates for bank loans, rising oil prices and soaring raw material costs have burdened overseas firms investing in China, as they will need to market their products at a cheaper price in emerging countries, she said.
Meanwhile, more investments in the form of venture capital are expected to flood into China in the near term, said Michael Kang (康中邁), a director at the consultant firm Zero2IPO Co (清科信息).
However, companies should be cautious as such investments have not performed up to expectations so far due to poor management capability and failure in technology development, he said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to