Taiwan's top handset maker BenQ Corp (
The deal would be BenQ's latest attempt to fulfill a bigger plan to raise NT$10 billion over the next 12 months by selling non-core investments and fixed assets to repay debt, after it decided not to finance the unprofitable European mobile phone unit that it purchased from Siemens AG in October last year.
BenQ said it sold its 31.55 percent stake, or around 9.7 million shares, in Airoha Technology Corp (
Mediatek is the world's top maker of chips for DVDs, but has been shifting its focus to handset chip manufacturing in recent years.
BenQ has made NT$1.25 billion from disposing of assets in Taoyuan County and part of its holdings in LCD equipment maker Gallant Precision Machining Co (均豪精密) after it unveiled the fund-raising plan in October to improve its financial situation.
Last week the firm said it would shut its research and development center in Beijing after the closure of a handset plant at home and the sale of the money-losing BenQ Mobile GmbH in Germany, currently in receivership after filing for insolvency.
Shares of BenQ were unchanged at NT$17.2 yesterday, outperforming the 0.07-percent loss on the benchmark TAIEX index. Mediatek shares dropped 0.9 percent to NT$331.
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