■ TAIEX reverses fall
Shares rose yesterday in a correction after their sharp falls on Wednesday, helped by a rebound in Japanese stocks. The TAIEX rose 13.37 points, or 0.2 percent, to 6,512.29 after falling 3.2 percent on Wednesday. "Investors came back today as Japan's shares stabilized, and as stocks [looked] relatively inexpensive after their heavy falls yesterday," said Diana Wu, a trader at Capital Securities Corp (群益證券). President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) appointment of former chairman of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as the next premier had no effect on the market, traders said. But investors were cautious about further gains before the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday, which begins Jan. 28, and seemed ready to off-load some of their holdings when the market strengthens, they added.
■ BenQ to tap Singapore market
BenQ Corp (明基), which completed the takeover of Siemens AG's unprofitable handset unit in September, said it will enter Singapore's mobile-phone market this year. "BenQ Mobile will announce its entry into the Singapore market with an exciting line-up of at least 20 new mobile phones to be launched this year,'' the company said in a statement yesterday. BenQ will unveil its products under the new BenQ-Siemens brand in Singapore today.
■ NT dollar slips further
The NT dollar remained weak against its US counterpart, falling NT$0.015 to close at NT$32.140 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$905 million.
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