Local companies should look to foreign multinational partners to jointly tap into China’s domestic market, rather than use a “go it alone” strategy, a visiting Japanese management guru said yesterday.
“Left alone, Taiwanese companies can become targets of acquisitions by Chinese rivals,” Kenichi Ohmae, president and CEO of Business Breakthrough, told a business forum organized by the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) in Taipei yesterday.
Ohmae said the window for Taiwanese businesses to excel in the Chinese market, which was wide open five years ago, is mostly closed now and will only last for one more year.
“Taiwan needs to refocus, quickly,” he said.
He said that Taiwan had been successful in taking advantage of China’s strength as a manufacturing export base, but now lacks brands, marketing and distribution strategies as well as access to the domestic demand market there.
Ohmae advised local businesses to establish a true insider position in China — an advantage that both Taiwan native-founded Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) and Uni-President Group (統一集團) enjoy, so as to appeal to European, US or Japanese businesses for potential partnerships in China.
He further urged local companies to list on both the Taipei and Shanghai bourses, which he said would make them extremely attractive to foreign companies for tie ups.
Ohmae, dubbed “Mr Strategy,” also urged the Taiwanese government to negotiate a quid pro quo with its Chinese counterpart — quasi local status for Taiwanese businesses so they can participate in steel and chemical industries in China as well as infrastructure projects such as railways, airports and harbors.
Moreover, corporations need to sharpen their global strategies based on the new world economic map following the recent financial tsunami, he said.
Ohmae predicted that in 2020 the EU would replace the US to become the world’s largest economy with Russia joining as its latest member.
He said the US would then be the second-largest economy in the world, followed by China, India and Japan, in that order.
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],”