TSMC sales increase
Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday it had registered consolidated sales of NT$32.61 billion (US$1.01 billion) last month, up from NT$29.45 billion in September.
Parent sales for the month came in at NT$31.73 billion, up from NT$28.50 billion in September and up 18.2 percent from a year earlier, said the firm, the world's largest contract maker of semiconductor chips.
Cumulative consolidated sales in the first 10 months of the year fell 3.0 percent year-on-year to NT$261.38 billion, it said.
Parent sales for the same period amounted to NT$254.38 billion, down 4.7 percent.
Meanwhile, TSMC's earlier guidance for the quarter to December remains unchanged, said Lora Ho (何麗梅), TSMC vice president and chief financial officer.
The firm said last month that it expected consolidated sales in the December quarter to rise to between NT$92 billion and NT$94 billion from NT$88.96 billion in the preceding three months.
NT dollar rises again
The New Taiwan dollar rose for a fifth week as the US currency extended declines on speculation that the Federal Reserve will continue cutting borrowing costs to revive economic growth.
The NT dollar was also buoyed as traders bet the island's central bank would keep raising interest rates to curb inflation that reached a 13-year high last month.
"We see the Taiwan dollar having the potential to gain more ground" because of the US dollar's broad-based decline, said Irene Cheung, a strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV based in Singapore. "A spike in October inflation calls for a stronger Taiwan dollar."
The NT dollar rose to close at NT$32.288 against the greenback, up from NT$32.308 on Thursday and NT$32.390 a week ago, according to Taipei Forex Inc. The currency closed near its strongest in 11 months.
Samsung stops Japan sales
Samsung Electronics Co has ceased consumer electronics sales in Japan despite the group's huge success elsewhere in the world, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.
Samsung's Japanese subsidiary stopped taking new orders from retail customers for products such as flat televisions via the Internet at the end of last month, she said.
Sales at retails shops had already ceased last year amid a tough fight against Japanese rivals on home turf.
"We had been offering our group's best products in the Japanese market where customers are strictly selective and top companies are jostling each other," the spokeswoman said.
The company wants to concentrate its resources for development on North America, Europe and emerging countries such as Brazil, she said.
More jobs, less takers
The local service industry saw an increase of 14,875 job opportunities over the past year, a spokesman for a local online job bank said on Thursday.
The total production of the service industry accounts for three-quarters of the nation's total GDP, said Monica Chiu (邱文仁), the marketing director of 104 Job Bank.
As an increasing number of local firms move production lines overseas, job opportunities in the manufacturing sector are on the decline, Chiu said, adding that there is a daily average of 31,346 manufacturing job vacancies on the Web site of the job bank, down 6 percent from last year and 22.7 percent from two years ago.
Despite the increase in openings, the employee turnover rate is high and companies have complained that it is difficult to find workers, according to Chiu.
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