Mildex Optical Inc (熒茂光學) and its offshore subsidiary, Mildex Asia Co, yesterday secured a three-year syndicated loan of NT$600 million (US$18.2 million) and US$18 million respectively from seven domestic banks, the loan’s lead bank Chang Hwa Bank (彰化銀行) said in a press statement.
The banks oversubscribed the loans by 55 percent on Mildex Optical’s latest breakthrough in the mass production of touch panels, even though the companies had just requested NT$500 million and US$15 million respectively, the statement said.
Banks taking part in the loan package include Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), Taiwan Business Bank (台灣中小企銀) and Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行).
The banks are bullish about Mildex Optical’s prospects in anticipation of business picking up after the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 later this year, the statement said.
Citing a research report, Chang Hwa said the output value of touch panels is expected to reach NT$100 billion this year. Daiwa Securities SMBC-Cathay Co (大和國泰) said last month that the penetration of touch panels used in notebooks would rise significantly over the next two years.
The penetration of touch screen notebooks was expected to triple from 4 percent this year to 12 percent next year and 20 percent in 2011, Daiwa analyst Emma Tang (唐婉倩) said in a report on June 2.
Mildex Optical, founded in 2005, had focused previously on the production of touch panels for military and industrial uses. It moved into the consumer touch panel market last year, the statement 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