Local telecoms provider Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) expects to make a profit this year after a breakthrough in expanding its customer base to more than 2 million subscribers, a company executive said yesterday.
Following a revamp of its executive suites last year, Asia Pacific Telecom has cut its losses to NT$70 million (US$2.1 million) in the first three months of the year, a company statement said.
“The company’s management team has been working hard on improving its financial structure over the past year. Now, we are starting to see some positive results,” Asia Pacific said in a statement.
The management team led by chairwoman Sophia Chiu (邱純枝), who took the helm in January, has been overhauling the weak financial structure of the company and offering telecoms services at low prices to increase its economic scale after former chairwoman Wang Chin She-ying (王金世英) fled the country after allegations of embezzlement in 2007.
“We started returning to the black in April in terms of the bottom line,” chief financial officer Frances Chen (陳曉蘋) said. “And we expect to earn NT$720 million at the end of the year.”
The unlisted telecoms provider started offering telecoms services on CDMA 2000 technology similar to third-generation (3G) technology in 2003, two years before the nation’s major telecoms operators launched 3G services on WCDMA technology.
This month, Asia Pacific Telecom has signed up to 2 million subscribers and it aims to increase the number to 2.3 million by the end of the year, the company said.
The number of 3G users in Taiwan reached 11.6 million people as of May 20, National Communications Commission’s data show.
With more free cash flows coming in, Asia Pacific plans to boost capital spending this year to NT$1.5 billion from less than NT$300 million last year.
The company also plans to upgrade its network to EVDO technology next year in order to offer more data services on telephones, said Vincent Chih (遲煥國), executive assistant to Chiu.
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],”