Teco Electric & Machinery Co (
"This chapter of the lawsuit is now closed, giving us a new chance to develop brand image and improve our market share in Japan," Eugene Huang (
Supported by the settlement news, shares of Teco moved up 0.1 percent to close at NT$9.68 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Teco, which operates under the affiliate Sankyo Co in Japan, is the first and only Taiwanese brand to attempt to sell brandname products in the highly competitive liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TV market in that country.
In June 2004, not long after it first introduced branded flat-panel TVs in Japan, Teco was hit with the Sharp lawsuit filed at a Tokyo district court.
The case alleged that Teco's models with 20-inch panels, which were sourced from AU Optronics Corp (
On April 12 last year, Sankyo filed a counter lawsuit against Sharp, seeking about ¥200 million (US$1.86 million) in damages for lost sales.
The lawsuit and countersuit hurt its reputation in Japan, Teco said, prompting traditional resellers to shun its products.
But with the settlement of the lawsuit, the company will soon gain the upper hand, Huang said.
He said the company has outlined aggressive plans for the Japanese market this year, and aims to "at least double" its sales from the 17,000 units it sold last year.
The company will build a logistics center in Japan to manage spare parts and inventory, as well as a testing lab for LCD TVs, quality control and maintenance support, he said.
"Offering the ideal product mix at the right price is not enough in Japan; we need to offer good service as well," Huang said.
To enhance its current offerings on 27, 30 and 32-inch panels in Japan, Teco will also consider bringing models more suited to consumers' needs there, he said.
Teco is poised to launch a new 46-inch LCD TV in the next quarter, and has plans to unveil a 50-inch flagship model in conjunction with its 50th anniversary in October.
Unlike Teco's aggressive plans, rival Tatung Co (
"The intense competition there makes it hard for foreign brands to get their footing. We will continue to focus our exports on European markets and boost brandname products sales this year," Tatung president Larry Hsiao (
Tatung has set a sales target of 85,000 LCD TV units this year, which would help it clinch leadership of the local market, he said.
The company sold 32,000 units last year, making it the No. 3 vendor after Matsushita Electric Industrial -- which sells electronics under the Panasonic brand name -- and Teco, Hsiao said.
Tatung aims to boost its local revenues to NT$10 billion this year, from NT$7 billion last year, he said.
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