The nation's car sales for the first eight months of the year fell nearly 30 percent as concerns over consumer bad debts and political unrest continued to plague the market.
Statistics released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed that total car sales from January to last month dipped 28 percent year-on-year to 261,233 units.
Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (福特六和), the nation's fourth-largest automaker, experienced the largest decline, with sales plunging 43 percent to 23,209 units during the period, the statistics showed.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (
Both Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) and China Motor Corp (中華汽車), the top two makers, reported milder sales falls of 30 percent to 73,997 units and 42,476 units, respectively.
Automakers said they expected full-year sales to reach 400,000 or even lower, a far cry from the more than 514,000 units sold last year, which were boosted by heavy promotions and growth in demand for recreational and utility vehicles.
"We don't see consumer confidence picking up before the end of the year as there are still a number of uncertainties weighing on sentiment," said Steven Yang (
The market has taken a beating amid continuing political conflict, high oil prices, rising commodity costs and consumer bad debts arising from credit and cash card abuse, he said.
Still, the company is betting on a slight pickup in this month's sales, as most automakers are gearing up to promote current or new models following stagnant sales last month, he said.
Sales last month -- the slowest month in the year due in part to the "Ghost Month" effect -- broke a 15-year record low by dipping to 17,513 units, or down 37 percent from the last year.
In view of the cloudy prospects, Hotai said it has set a sales target of around 125,000 cars this year, down from its original forecast of 150,000.
Yulon Nissan, which expects total domestic car sales to drop to 380,000 units this year, also trimmed its own sales target from 70,000 cars to 50,000.
After its board of directors' meeting last Monday, the company announced that it had revised downward its full-year sales target by 30 percent to NT$36.2 billion (US$1.1 billion) to reflect weak market momentum.
Second-half sales are not promising and may plunge by 25 percent to 30 percent, it 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
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