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.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained