■ Credit card volume rises
The outstanding balance of revolving credit in credit cards accumulated to NT$492.9 billion (US$14.7 billion) at the end of October, up 10.2 percent year on year, according to statistics released on Monday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS). As of Oct. 31, there were 51 credit card issuers operating in Taiwan, while the number of credit cards in circulation reached 45.74 million, up 6.5 percent from the same period last year. There were around 24.54 million cards activated in the last six months, an annual growth rate of 1.7 percent, the statistics showed. The ratio of overdue bills from activated cards was 2.45 percent of payments, representing year-on-year growth of 2.11 percent. The credit amount in the period between January and October reached NT$1.2 trillion, a growth of 15.9 percent over the level of the same period last year, while cash advances hit NT$185 billion, with year-on-year growth of 11.9 percent, according to the DGBAS. Meanwhile, there were 33 cash card issuers at the end of October, the DGBAS tallies showed, indicating about 3.67 million cash cards had been used for loans of NT$313.3 billion, up 41.1 percent year on year.
■ NT dollar strengthens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday gained ground against its US counterpart, bolstered by the yen ahead of a possible interest rate hike in the US, dealers said. The local currency rose NT$0.056 to close at NT$33.498 on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$731 million, up from US$691 million the previous day.
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
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
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],”
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