HTC buys US design firm
HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones running on Microsoft Inc’s system, said yesterday it had spent US$4.82 million in cash to buy a US design company through an overseas subsidiary.
The company made the statement in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The deal will help strengthen HTC’s innovation and design capabilities, CEO Peter Chou (周永明) told reporters last Friday. HTC did not reveal the name of the US company.
HTC is looking for more acquisition opportunities to enhance its core business, Chou said.
The company favors companies with a strategic fit such as software firms, he said.
New debit card launched
Far Eastern International Bank (遠東商銀) and MasterCard Worldwide yesterday launched a new debit card that combines the bonus program offered by Happy Go (快樂購) cards and millions of shopping outlets worldwide.
Cardholders will be able to collect bonus points when shopping at 28 million MasterCard outlets worldwide, up from the current 5,000 local outlets.
Speaking at the product launch yesterday, Alan Lee, (李銘傳), executive vice president of the bank’s consumer banking and credit card group, said the bank had set a target of issuing 500,000 cards within a year and breaking the 1 million mark in three years.
Sell Foxconn: Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG downgraded its rating on Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康), the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of mobile phones, to “sell” on projections that orders would slow.
Foxconn’s sales next year may decline by 10 percent, Deutsche Bank analyst KC Kao wrote in a report on saturday, citing “unfavorable handset dynamics.”
The analyst cut his stock rating for the Shenzhen, China-based company from “hold” and lowered his price target to HK$1.70 (US$0.22) from HK$4.20.
Foxconn shares, which rose 5 percent to HK$2.05 in Hong Kong trading on Friday, have declined 88 percent this year, underperforming the 54 percent drop in the territory’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Tingyi’s Q3 profit rises 20%
Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp (頂益控股), China’s biggest maker of packaged food, said third-quarter profit rose 20 percent.
Net income for the three months ended September rose to US$91.9 million from US$76.5 million in the same period last year, the Tianjin-based company said in a statement to Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday. Sales increased to US$1.3 billion from US$995 million.
Chunghwa may shutter LCD fab
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (華映), the nation’s fourth-biggest maker of liquid-crystal displays, may shut down one of its factories to cut costs after posting a loss in the third quarter, James Wu (巫俊毅), chief financial officer of the Taoyuan-based company, said by telephone yesterday.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar weakened by NT$0.033 to close at NT$33.421 against the greenback on turnover of US$543 million.
Analysts said that the currency fell on mounting speculation the economy is entering its first recession since 2001.
“Demand from foreign markets is slowing and has affected not only volume but also prices,” said Forest Chen, an economist at Taiwan Securities Investment Advisory (台證投顧) in Taipei. “It will be hard to escape the slowdown, and the central bank will probably let the currency fall to NT$34 or NT$35 in the fourth quarter.”
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by