Following its recent success, Motorola Inc, the world's top maker of walkie-talkies, yesterday said it would continue to safeguard its patents by cracking down on the production and sales of counterfeit products.
In September, Motorola won a patent lawsuit against Chinese manufacturer Quanzhou Fei Jie Electronic Co (
The Chinese firm has agreed to stop making and selling phony Motorola radios and conceded to other requests, the US-based company said without giving details about the agreement.
PHOTO: WANG YI-HUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The settlement marks a milestone in Motorola's long-term efforts to protect its patents. We will continue to curb counterfeiting of Motorola products to safeguard the interest of Motorola and our consumers," Johnny Chen (
In order to tap into the market, smaller players have copied Motorola's portable two-way radios, hurting Motorola's business and consumer's interests, Chen said.
"Counterfeit batteries are very dangerous as poorly manufactured goods can cause the walkie-talkies to malfunction during critical moments," Chen said, adding that Motorola's walkie-talkies are widely used by policemen and fire fighters.
Motorola is pursuing similar lawsuits in other regions, Chen said, although he declined to provide details.
Motorola said it had received several complaints from consumers in Taiwan about the circulation of counterfeit Motorola products -- mostly knockoffs of its batteries and popular V3 series handsets.
Most of the fake Motorola products were imported items, the company said.
Motorola does not plan to take any legal action until it has collected sufficient information and evidence, Chen said.
To ensure that consumers only get authentic Motorola products, the company has set up Motorola Genuine Outlets (MGO) in the Asia-Pacific region to sell its products.
Motorola currently operates 12 MGOs in Taiwan among 118 similar outlets around in the region.
In other developments, Motorola plans to set up 30 stores in Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd (國美電器) outlets in China this year to help increase its sales in less developed cities.
The Gome-Motorola partnership is expected to generate revenue of 3 billion yuan (US$381 million) next year, China's biggest electronics retailer said in Beijing yesterday.
It expects to sell 3 million units, accounting for 28 percent of Gome's handset sales next year.
"In the next two years, handsets offering features such as television and games will be highly sought after by consumers," Gome billionaire founder and chairman Huang Guangyu (黃光裕) said in Beijing.
Motorola is the best-selling brand in Gome's outlets, Huang said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to