Still reeling from its disappointing acquisition of Siemens’ mobile-phone business in 2005, BenQ Corp (明基) said yesterday that its new corporate strategy would focus on low-cost notebooks, or netbooks.
“To capitalize on the overwhelming consumer adaptation of mobile technologies, BenQ’s future will lie in netbooks,” Hank Horng (洪漢青), president of business operations of BenQ Taiwan and China, told reporters at a briefing.
Citing statistics from DisplaySearch, Gartner and IDC, Horng said the global market forecast for netbooks next year was 20 million to 22 million units, a 65 percent increase from this year. The 10.1 inch screen would be the mainstream netbook panel, he said.
BenQ unveiled its first netbook yesterday. Called Joybook Lite U101, its launch came just in time for Taipei’s Information Technology Month (IT Month), which starts today.
Weighing 1.1kg, the U101 features a 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, and runs on an Intel Atom processor. The suggested retail price is NT$17,890 (US$539), but during IT Month, the promotion price will be NT$16,777, Horng said.
Horng said BenQ planned to roll out more netbook models in April or May.
The Taipei-based company is No. 8 in notebook computer sales domestically. It ranks No. 6 in digital camera sales domestically, with a 6 percent of the market share.
Horng said BenQ’s 42-inch full high-definition liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TV set was the No. 1 seller among TVs at local hypermarkets.
In related news, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Siemens has agreed to pay 300 million euros (US$391.3 million) in damages to BenQ’s administrator over the bankruptcy of its German mobile-phone unit.
BenQ acquired the mobile unit from Siemens in 2005 before it became insolvent. The business went bust less than a year later after BenQ decided to stop funding it.
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],”