Chinatrust plans to buy shares
Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), owner of Taiwan’s biggest credit-card issuer, said it plans to buy back about 1 percent of its shares.
Chinatrust plans to buy 84 million of its shares at between NT$17 and NT$26 each, from Monday to Nov. 21, the Taipei-based company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The stock surged 6.7 percent to close at NT$15.85.
Wistron ready to talk to Dell
Wistron Corp (緯創), the world’s third-largest contract manufacturer of notebook computers, said it would be open to begin negotiations to buy production facilities from Dell Inc.
“If Dell is interested in talking to Wistron, then Wistron would be willing to enter discussions” about factory purchases, said Joyce Chou (周文玲), a spokeswoman for Wistron, confirming comments by chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) on Thursday. “We won’t give up any investment opportunity.”
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday reported that Lin said he was interested in talking with Dell about purchasing the US company’s factories.
Dell plans to sell factories and has approached manufacturers about a deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 5, citing people familiar with the matter.
Government sells bonds
The government sold NT$40 billion (US$1.2 billion) in 10-year bonds at a yield of 2.243 percent, lower than the rate of return at the last sale of comparable debt.
The yield in the previous sale in June was 2.716 percent. The latest auction drew bids equal to 1.33 times the debt on offer, compared with 1.22 times at the last auction, a central bank statement said.
Phone firm sees stability
Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe’s biggest telephone company and the owner of T-Mobile, said the domestic wireless market may stabilize and even grow as the company bets on mobile data to spur growth.
“There’s still a lot of room when it comes to mobile usage in Germany,” Philipp Humm, who runs the company’s T-Mobile Germany wireless unit, said in an interview.
The company said on Thursday it will start subsidizing notebooks like mobile phones this year to boost data revenue.
T-Mobile will start reselling Acer Inc’s (宏碁) Aspire One notebook for 1 euro in November to users signing up for a 24-month contract, the company said on Thursday. Notebooks from LG Electronics Inc and Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) will also be available.
WiMAX share set to grow
Taiwan’s WiMAX customer premises equipment (CPE) industry global market share is estimated to reach 40 percent next year thanks to the growing performance of the WiMAX service, a senior market analyst said.
Chang Chi (張奇), a senior industry analyst of the Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 資訊市場情報中心), made the forecast at a seminar in Tokyo on Thursday.
CPE is equipment installed at customers’ sites to connect them to service providers’ networks. Chang said the shipment volume of Taiwan’s CPE industry for this year is expected to hit 1.04 million units, and that the projection for next year is 2.92 million units.
NT dollar declines again
The New Taiwan dollar declined for a ninth week as global financial turmoil prompted overseas investors to pull funds out of emerging markets.
The NT dollar rose 0.2 percent yesterday but fell 0.4 percent this week to NT$32.158 per US dollar, according to Taipei Forex Inc. The local currency has dropped 4.9 percent since the beginning of last month.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”