■ Mattel defends Barbies
US toy maker Mattel Inc reassured consumers that its staple Barbie dolls are safe and will not cause health defects, according to a statement released by Mattel Taiwan Corp yesterday. The statement is in response to a report by China's Xinhua news agency which cited a German ecology magazine as saying that among 30 toys examined by the magazine, 24 contained phthalates, including Barbie. Phthalates are chemicals added to soften plastic vinyl, and will cause damage to liver and testes and trigger reproductive effects and even cancer if one exposes to the substance for a long term above maximum contaminant level. Barbie and other toys made by Mattel were found to contain phthalates, but the company announced that it began introducing organically-derived material that does not contain phthalates for use in every Mattel product line in December 1999. Mattel said its products were strictly monitored and passed examinations of Corporate Product Integrity, US Consumer Product Safety, Commission Health Canada and other international certification institutions, the statement said.
■ NT dollar gains ground
The NT dollar strengthened for a third day. The currency edged up NT$0.032 to NT$33.461 against its US counterpart, according to Taipei Forex Inc. Overseas funds bought a net NT$17.97 billion (US$536.6 million) of Taiwanese stocks last month before purchasing a net NT$2.99 billion this month through yesterday, according to the stock exchange.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts