Following six years of development, Eastern Home Shopping Network (
Eastern Home's four channels, down from five last year to cut back on investments, only started to break even in the latter half of last year. It raked in NT$35 billion (US$1.08 billion) in sales last year and conservatively expects to post 10-percent growth this year.
But the nation's largest TV shopping service provider has been eager to expand into new markets.
"We're cautious in evaluating the market across the Taiwan Strait and plan to test the water there by launching one of our leading own-brand lines," said Jennifer Sung (
Restricted by China's laws, which stipulate that TV stations cannot air live programs and forbid companies from running businesses across different regions, Eastern Home decided not to go it alone in China.
Instead, it will seek cooperation with China's department stores and establish independent outlets to sell De Mon-brand cosmetics.
Sung said the company has filed applications for operating licenses and merchandise inspection from authorities in Beijing and Shanghai, and hopes to begin providing services in the third quarter.
While there might be more variables in its expansion westward, Eastern Home has teamed up with Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation's No. 2 mobile carrier, to offer shopping services via mobile phones from the middle of this month, Sung said.
"With the high penetration rate of cellphone usage and popularity of multi-functional mobile phones, we're confident that mobile shopping has great potential and that users will get more used to making purchases on the small screen," she said.
Due to the limited number of third-generation (3G) users, the TV shopping network will first tap into the second-generation market, offering lower-priced products, before moving into 3G, which provides e-mail, high-speed Internet and live sound and image broadcasts to compatible handsets.
Eastern Home's seemingly creative and aggressive approaches, however, were ridiculed as mere marketing stunts by its smaller rival, Fubon Multimedia Technology Co (
Fubon Multimedia, an affiliate of Fubon Financial Holding Co (
"Since Eastern Home is barely making a profit from its current operations, how will it make money by entering the China market?" asked Fubon Multimedia's spokeswoman Jean Chen (陳景怡) during a phone interview.
"Besides, no one wants to do their shopping via cell phone. Otherwise we'd have tapped into this segment as Fubon Financial owns Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大)," she said.
Fubon Multimedia said it expects to boost sales by introducing more products from overseas.
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