Chipmakers limit costs
Semiconductor firms in Taiwan, especially the hard hit dynamic random access memory (DRAM) manufacturers who have suffered huge losses from oversupply, were asking their employees to take a longer-than-usual break to save costs amid falling demand.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) and Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) were the first among the nation’s big four DRAM companies to ask their employees to take three days off per week in October. ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) followed suit last month.
Unlike its rivals, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (PSC, 力晶半導體), the nation’s largest computer memory chipmaker, implemented a different cost saving measure by cutting the monthly salaries of section chiefs and above by 10 percent to 20 percent.
Intel, Hitachi cooperate
Intel Corp, the world’s biggest chipmaker, agreed to develop flash-memory disk drives with Hitachi Ltd for servers, workstations and storage computers.
The solid-state drives should go on sale by early 2010, the companies said on Monday in a joint statement. Unlike conventional drives, which rely on spinning magnetic disks to store information, flash memory has no moving parts.
Prices of the benchmark flash-memory chip have fallen about 70 percent this year amid an industry oversupply, figures from Dramexchange Technology Inc (集邦科技), operator of Asia’s largest spot market for chips, showed. Solid-state drives would represent another market for Intel memory chips.
Banks announce writedowns
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Taiwan’s third-largest financial services company by market value, and Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控) said their bank units had written down the value of overseas investments amid economic turmoil.
Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) booked losses of US$6.5 million and 9.56 million euros (US$12 million), Mega Financial said in a Taiwan stock exchange statement on Monday. The company gave no further details on what the investments were.
Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) recorded a loss of NT$1.09 billion (US$33 million) on Iceland-linked investments, its parent said in a separate stock exchange filing.
CPC lowers natural gas price
The state-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) announced yesterday it would cut domestic natural gas prices by 2.99 percent on average, retroactive to Monday, marking the largest natural gas price drop announced by CPC since it was authorized to do so.
The news came as a surprise as the firm had initially said it would not lower natural gas prices until next month.
CPC said its natural gas department had an accumulated loss of NT$35 billion this year, as imported liquefied natural gas prices were higher than its domestic prices in the first 11 months
NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar fell to its lowest point in more than a week on concern that the global economic slowdown would erode profit in the nation’s economy.
The NT dollar declined a second day against the US dollar, down 0.4 percent to close at NT$33.489 on the Taipei Forex Inc. The local currency earlier touched NT$33.516, the lowest level since Nov. 21.
“The Taiwan stock exchange is heavily skewed toward corporates with large export components,” said Dwyfor Evans, a currency strategist at State Street Global Markets in Hong Kong. “There will be concern about capital outflows if we continue to see local corporates coming under pressure. There’s got to be some sort of managed depreciation in the currency.”
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained