China’s major TV vendors, including Konka Group Co (康佳), TCL Corp and Haier Group (海爾), intend to purchase more flat panels from Taiwanese companies to cope with growing demand for liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TVs in China, the government-run Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) said yesterday.
To secure sufficient panel supply, senior executives from eight Chinese TV makers were scheduled to meet Taiwanese LCD panel suppliers on June 1 in Taipei for a collective purchase of LCD panels, TAITRA said in a press release.
The visit will also be used to discuss potential future technological cooperation, the release said.
The comments came in response to a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday that said the Chinese companies intended to place orders for lower-priced Taiwanese TV flat-panels next month.
In January, Taiwan’s two biggest flat-panel makers — AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) — said they had signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s major TV vendors, including TCL Corp, to supply panels in the long term after Beijing said it would encourage Chinese companies to buy US$2 billion in panels over the next four years.
Chinese TV makers hoped to clinch deals for long-term panel supply from local companies to cope with voracious demand for flat-panel TVs in China, TAITRA said.
LCD TV sales grew at a faster-than-expected pace to reach 5 million units in the first quarter of this year, TAITRA said, citing an unspecified survey.
Flat-panel TV sales could grow 30 percent year-on-year to 20 million units this year, helped by the Chinese government’s policy of subsidizing the purchase of flat-panel TVs in rural areas and growing replacement demand for traditional cathode-ray-tube TVs, a forecast said.
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