A government-funded digital divide program has helped a total of 70,000 small businesses to subscribe to ADSL broadband Internet service, and incorporate e-commerce into the operations of their businesses, an official said yesterday.
The three-year "Bridging the Digital Divide of the SME Project (2005-2007)" has generated an estimated NT$4.3 billion (US$132 million) in business opportunities, Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said at an award ceremony.
The project, sponsored by the Small-and-Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA), first opened in 2005 in a bid to assist small-sized businesses with fewer than 20 employees to collaborate with local information service providers to use the Internet and e-commerce in their business operations.
"The collaboration also helped create NT$1.63 billion in new business opportunities for the information service providers," Chen said.
The program also helped in the formation of female-run start-ups, as out of the 70,000 small businesses, there are 20,000 businesses owned by women , he said.
Lai Gui-tsan (賴閨燦), manager of the Nantou County-based Mone Garden Resort Village (寞內花園山莊), said sales at the resort had increased between two and threefold after using an e-commerce Web site and collaborating with Yahoo for a keyword search.
"Our monthly sales have increased from around NT$100,000 in the past, to between at least NT$300,000 and NT$400,000 each month, even during low-demand seasons," said Lai, whose business was recognized for its creative operation through the use of the Internet.
Hsu Chih-wei (許智偉), general manager of the Tainan City-based West Well Cuisine (西井村食品企業), which specializes in honey-flavored foods braised in soy sauce -- locally known as luwei (滷味) -- said the company is currently the nation's number one luwei category business in terms of online group orders.
"Our business went from being a local street vendor a year and a half ago, with monthly sales of less than NT$80,000, to now reaching NT$1,000,000 a month," Hsu said, adding that the company has even received orders from customers in the US and Singapore.
The ministry has allocated a total budget of US$10.87 million for the three-year digital divide program which ends this year, the ministry said on its Web site.
Apparently encouraged by the program, Chen said the ministry was considering providing another similar program in the future to help upgrade traditional small and medium-sized enterprises as well as promote Taiwanese businesses abroad.
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