Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 telecoms operator, aims to increase its enterprise customers by 20 percent this year as budget-sensitive companies look for cost-efficient wireless and broadband Internet options amid the budding economic recovery, a company executive said yesterday.
Local telecoms carriers including Taiwan Mobile hope to steal a bigger share of the enterprise market from market leader Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to make up for the decline in household customers.
Chunghwa has about 80 percent of the enterprise market, with revenues of about NT$100 billion (US$3.05 billion) a year.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
“Economic turmoil provides a new opportunity for us, with companies starting to look over their budgets in tough times ... Our service can help customers save 30 percent in communications costs,” Taiwan Mobile chief operating officer George Chou (周鐘麒) told a media briefing yesterday.
“Based on orders placed recently, we will grow further in the July to September period in terms of revenue,” Chou said, adding that the yearly target to boost enterprise subscribers was achievable.
Revenue from corporate businesses rose 2.26 percent to NT$2.4 billion in the second quarter from NT$2.26 billion in the first quarter. That represented a drop of about 3 percent year-on-year.
Taiwan Mobile forecast third-quarter revenue to remain near last year’s level at NT$17.57 billion, a 1 percent quarterly rise.
TOP CABLE PROVIDER
Separately, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Taiwan Mobile denied speculation that it was in talks to acquire the nation’s second-biggest cable TV provider, Kbro Co Ltd (凱擘) — owned by private equity fund Carlyle Group — via a share swap.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday said Taiwan Mobile was considering a deal to become the nation’s top cable TV provider, acquiring Kbro and its 1.1 million cable TV subscribers.
Taiwan Mobile has 600,000 cable TV subscribers.
The speculation “is not true,” Taiwan Mobile said.
Taiwan Mobile does hope to negotiate a share-swap deal to introduce a strategic partner, but it has no plans to acquire cable assets, company president Harvey Chang (張孝威) told an investor’s teleconference last week.
Taiwan Mobile planned to cut capital spending this year to NT$6.5 billion from NT$7.4 billion last year. But it said it would boost spending on its cable business to NT$600 million from NT$400 million.
Shares of Taiwan Mobile rose 0.6 percent to NT$50.5 yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX index, which lost 0.3 percent.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six