■ AUO touts Honeywell deal
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's third-largest manufacturer of flat-panel displays, said yesterday that it had been granted patent licensing from Honeywell International Inc and Honeywell Intellectual Properties Inc. A company spokeswoman said that the licensing involved US production-technology patent rights for thin-film-transistor, liquid-crystal displays, but declined to elaborate. AU Optronics last month announced it and Sharp Corp would widen their cross-licensing agreement on liquid-crystal displays. AU Optronics reported a net profit for last year of NT$15.63 billion (US$481 million), down 44.1 percent from the previous year.
■ Quanta's Q4 profit climbs
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the largest maker of notebook computers, had a 14 percent gain in fourth-quarter profit, according to a company statement released yesterday. Net income for the three month ended December climbed to NT$3.3 billion (US$102 million) from NT$2.9 billion a year earlier. Fourth-quarter sales rose to NT$133 billion from NT$111 billion a year earlier, according to the company's monthly releases. For last year, its net profit fell 8.94 percent to NT$10.90 billion, although sales rose 24.24 percent to NT$403.10 billion, the company said.
■ Greenback edges up
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.126 to close at NT$32.586. A total of US$970 million changed hands.
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],”