Chi Mei posts 69% gain
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation's second-largest flat-panel maker, announced yesterday that its consolidated revenue for last month increased 68.41 percent year-on-year to NT$32.96 billion (US$1.01 billion), driven by robust shipments.
Shipments for its thin-film transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) last month amounted to 5.49 million panels, up by 60.65 percent from a year ago, the firm said.
For the third quarter, Chi Mei posted consolidated revenue of NT$88.21 billion, a 80.81 percent increase from the same period last year, it said. Shipments amounted to 15.1 million panels, a 63.71 percent rise from a year ago.
LG in deal with unnamed firm
LG Electronics Inc, the world's fifth-largest LCD television maker, plans to sign an outsourcing agreement to have a Taiwan-based company make LCD TVs to cut production costs.
The firm would likely make 500,000 LCD TVs a year for LG, said Judy Pae, a spokeswoman for Seoul-based LG, by telephone yesterday without naming the company or giving financial details.
The firm would make LCD TVs measuring more than 30 inches that LG plans to sell in the US market, Pae said.
Record sales for Quanta
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world's largest maker of laptops, posted record sales and shipments last month.
Parent company sales, excluding affiliates, climbed 77 percent to NT$78 billion (US$2.4 billion) last month, from NT$44.2 billion a year earlier, Quanta said in a statement.
Notebook-computer shipments rose to 3.1 million, surpassing the previous record of 2.9 million set last month, the company said.
Consolidated sales, including affiliates, were NT$79.5 billion last month, the statement said, without providing year-earlier figures.
Taiwan Mobile announces deal
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation's second-largest telecom operator, yesterday said it has signed an agreement with China's Hurray! Holdings (華友世紀) to buy a digital content developing unit for US$5.3 million in cash.
Taiwan Mobile said it planned to buy Beijing-based Hurray! Times Communications (華友時代通信技術) via an overseas venture capital affiliate TWM Holdings Co.
Hurray! Times Communications develops and designs digital contents for mobile devices. The deal still needs the approval from the regulators from Taiwan and China.
Chunghwa kills injunction
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) yesterday said it had withdrawn an injunction request against local electronics component supplier Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) stemming from an intellectual property dispute.
Hon Hai also removed an injunction request from a local district court, the telecom operator said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Last month Chunghwa Telecom filed the counter injunction to block Hon Hai's request that the phone company stop leasing set-top boxes that may infringe on patents to Internet TV users.
Hon Hai had said that the set-top boxes Chunghwa Telecom bought from Hwa-Com Systems Inc (華電聯網) and made by Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) had illegally used its patents.
Lite-On set to be No. 1
Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) secured EU antitrust approval to buy Perlos Oyj of Finland and become the world's largest maker of mobile-telephone casings.
The European Commission, the EU's antitrust regulator in Brussels, announced its approval yesterday in a statement after reviewing the proposed transaction under a simplified procedure.
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