■ Copyrights
Movie studios sue Samsung
Walt Disney Co, Time Warner Inc and three other movie studios sued Samsung Electronics Co, saying the company's DVD players allow consumers to circumvent encryption features that prevent unauthorized duplication. Technicians for the studios could disable the piracy prevention feature on the DVD players by pressing a sequence of numbers on the remote control, the studios said in a complaint filed on Friday in federal court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit demands a recall of all Samsung DVD players that allow copy-protection features to be disabled. Piracy cost the movie industry about US$5.4 billion in sales last year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The other studios bringing the lawsuit are Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios.
■ Shipping
Evergreen lifts profit target
Evergreen Group (長榮集團) is targeting a record NT$15 billion (US$463 million) pre-tax profit this year, the Chinese-language newspaper Commercial Times reported, citing company president Arnold Wang (王龍雄). The company raised shipment charges by more than US$100 per container from April and may raise them further in May should demand remain strong, the newspaper reported. Wang's comments are aimed at rebuffing a Morgan Stanley report saying it cut its recommendation and earning estimates for four Asia-based shipping lines including Evergreen, citing a decline in the fee for moving sea freight, the newspaper said.
■ Marketing
TAITRA to throw light on EU
The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) will invite experts with marketing experience in Europe to a seminar on Feb. 21 to help Taiwanese enterprises better understand European markets and the possible challenges, a TAITRA official said yesterday. As the EU's directives on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) will come into force on July 1, TAITRA will also invite an adviser from the Electric-Electronic and Environmental Technology Development Association and representatives of the French Geodis Group, which ranks among the top five European transport and logistic firms, to offer advice to local firms on how to comply with the ROHS directives and to boost their competitiveness.
■ Credit
Co-ops' loan ratio drops
The overdue loan ratio of the 278 credit cooperatives operated by farmers' and fishermen's associations nationwide declined to 10.92 percent as of the end of December last year, according to tallies released yesterday by the Council of Agriculture. The ratio was 0.94 percentage points lower than that registered at the end of the previous month and 3.54 percentage points lower than that of the same time the previous year, the tallies show. The overdue loans amounted to NT$65 billion (US$2 billion) as of the end of December last year, down NT$4.9 billion over the same time in 2004. As of the end of December, the assets of the credit cooperatives amounted to NT$1.57 trillion, down NT$5.4 billion over November last year. The net asset value amounted to NT$82.3 billion, down NT$2.8 billion from November. The deposit balance totaled NT$1.36 trillion, up NT$10.7 billion from the previous month, while the loan balance totalled NT$594.9 billion, up NT$5.9 billion from the previous month.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”