BenQ Corp (
The loss in the 12 months until Sept. 30 includes the company's own-branded business and its contract-manufacturing operations, Rick Lei (
There were two reasons for the delays, Lei said. First, Munich-based BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co sold custom-made phones for operators, so the customization and modification process took time.
But the more important factor was poor product management at the German unit, he said.
"The unit's management team didn't make enough effort to integrate their project, customer, supply chain operations," Lei said.
The loss was "unbearable" for BenQ, which has registered capital of NT$26.2 billion (US$794 million), Lei said.
If BenQ were to continue to keep the German unit, it would have to inject 800 million euros into the unit in the coming year, he said.
BenQ, the world's No. 6 mobile phone vendor by market share, filed for insolvency last week for the German operations it took over from Siemens AG last October, endangering 3,000 jobs.
Taiwan's biggest mobile-phone maker said it can still use the Siemens brand for four more years under the sale agreement.
BenQ expects Siemens to honor an agreement to pay an outstanding amount of at least 150 million euros from the deal, said Eric Yu (
Siemens, which faces criticism from workers, unions and politicians over BenQ's decision, and said on Friday it may take legal steps against the Taiwanese company.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now