The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA,
The five Gold Award winners included Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (
"A notable theme among this year's Gold Award winners is how closely the products touch the everyday lives of consumers," TAITRA said in a statement issued yesterday.
The trend underscores how Taiwanese companies are successfully using innovative designs to expand beyond their traditional roots in electronics manufacturing, it said.
The award ceremony was hosted by Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) and attended by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Chi Mei, Taiwan's second-largest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, picked up a Gold Award for its 56-inch LCD TV panel, model V562D1.
The company successfully developed the world's first 56-inch LCD TV panel featuring Quad Full High Definition at 8.29 million pixels.
The resolution is four times that of currently available products, the highest ever achieved in the industry.
Power Quotient also won a Gold Award with its innovative Card Drive.
Unlike standard universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, Power Quotient's product has a 3mm-thick aluminum casing to protect data from shock, and can be carried in a wallet.
Unitech Electronics, the world's leading maker of rugged personal digital assistants (PDAs) used for inventory management, was rewarded for its rugged voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) PDA, model PA600.
The PA600 is sealed against water and dust, and equipped with a bar code scanner, keypad, touch screen and VoIP for data collection.
Meanwhile, Sports Art won its first Gold Award for the X Trainer, ergonomically designed fitness equipment that promotes cardiovascular health, and minimizes stress on joints.
Giant won recognition for its Maestro Suspension Bike.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day