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Shares rise despite Wall Street

Taiwanese share prices closed 0.79 percent higher yesterday as bargain hunters ignored Wall Street's overnight fall amid lingering worries about the subprime mortgage crisis, dealers said.

The bellwether electronics sector was bolstered by consumer demand for information technology and communication products during the year-end shopping season, they said.

The TAIEX closed up 67.44 points at 8,651.28. Turnover was NT$94.54 billion (US$2.93 billion).

Risers led decliners 1,237 to 764, with 448 stocks unchanged.

On the foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar ended the day's trading at NT$32.305 over the US dollar, down NT$0.001 from the previous close.

Turnover was US$635 million on the Taipei Forex Inc.

Double dollars for Far EasTone

Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), Taiwan's third-largest telephone company, said revenue from mobile services including text messages and video downloads will more than double in three years on demand for high-speed connections.

The mobile-phone carrier may derive 30 percent of its sales from non-voice services by 2010, compared with about 12 percent now, Jan Nilsson, vice-chairman of the Taipei-based company, said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday.

Far EasTone will start a high-speed wireless service based on WiMAX technology in the second half of next year, Nilsson said.

The company expects subscriber growth to accelerate next year, driven by demand for 3G services, Nilsson said.

Far EasTone added 193,000 mobile-phone users in the first 10 months of this year for a total of 6.16 million, about 1.3 million of whom were 3G users, Nilsson said. With a population of 23 million, Taiwan had 24 million mobile-phone subscribers at the end of October, government data showed.

Fujitsu to set up Taiwan firm

Fujitsu Ltd, Japan's biggest computer-services provider, will set up a company in Taiwan to develop WiMAX software as Taiwan prepares to start services based on the high-speed wireless technology.

Fujitsu will own 51 percent, with the Taiwanese government-backed Institute for Information Industry holding the remainder, the firm said in a statement distributed in Tokyo yesterday.

The new venture, Taiwan Solution AE Center, is scheduled to be set up in March, Fujitsu said.

Taiwan awarded six licenses for WiMAX services in July.

Fears hit housing market

The housing market for the greater Taipei area saw a decrease in both the number of transactions and prices last month, an executive with a major real estate company said yesterday.

Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋), president of Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋), said that compared with October, the number of closed deals in greater Taipei last month dropped 10 percent, while the average price of NT$275,000 per ping (3.3m2) fell by 6 percent.

Yeh attributed the fall mainly to uncertainties over the forthcoming legislative and presidential elections next month and in March, as well as the downward trend in Taiwan's stock market that has sapped purchasing power.

The stock market's weighted index shed more than 1,600 points, or 15 percent, last month.

Equipment sales to suffer

Global sales of chipmaking equipment will probably drop next year after growth slowed this year, an industry group said.

Revenue may decline 1.5 percent to US$41.05 billion next year after rising 3 percent to US$41.68 billion this year, Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International said yesterday.
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