The nation's energy consumption rose less than 1 percent for a second month in July because of a drop in electricity demand from manufacturers such as Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world's biggest notebook computer maker.
Energy demand increased 0.7 percent from a year earlier to the equivalent of 9.34 million kiloliters (58.7 million barrels) of oil, after rising 0.6 percent in June, the Bureau of Energy said yesterday. That compares with an average of 3.1 percent last year.
Manufacturers such as Quanta reported slower sales as bad debt dampened demand.
"The industrial sector isn't doing well amid the impact from the card debt problems,'' Wei Juen-shen (韋潤生), a planning official at the Bureau of Energy, said in a telephone interview.
"Electronics companies used less electricity because consumption for end-products fell, dragging down demand for components," Wei said.
The nation used 19 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in July, 0.01 percent more than a year earlier. Industrial and energy companies, which accounted for 54 percent of the consumption, used 0.35 percent less power, the energy bureau said on its Web site.
Increased electricity prices helped depress consumption, Lee Chuan-lai (李傳來), spokesman of state-run Taiwan Power Co (台電) said by telephone yesterday. The company increased rates by an average of 5.8 percent in July.
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