Computer giant Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday denied a newspaper report that said it planned to open a notebook personal computer plant in Brazil.
“The company has no information on that. Personally, I think it is unlikely,”Acer spokesman Henry Wang (汪島雄) said.
“It is totally unlikely that Acer plans to build a notebook PC plant in Brazil. If you say it is a desktop PC plant, that could be remotely likely, even though that is not being planned either,” he said.
Wang was responding to report in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo on Saturday, which said that Acer, after withdrawing from Brazil for 15 years, plans to return to local market and open a notebook PC plant.
The reason given was that Acer ships its notebook PCs and the smaller netbook PCs to Brazil via Paraguay and sells them at low price in Brazil, which has made its computers popular in Brazil.
However, Brazil has cut tariffs on information products and is offering incentives to retailers, which has made Acer’s transshipment through Paraguay unnecessary, Folha said.
Established in 1976, Acer has a worldwide staff of 5,000 employees. The company’s consolidated revenue for the first half of the year totaled NT$238.17 billion (US$7.3 billion), down 5 percent from NT$252.2 billion a year earlier.
After-tax profit fell 26 percent to NT$5.9 billion over the same period, Acer said on Aug. 27.
In 2007, Acer overtook Dell Inc and became the world’s No 2 notebook computer vendor after buying US computer maker Gateway in October of that year.
In the second quarter of this year it secured a market share of 20.1 percent, Gartner Inc’s data shows.
The Gateway purchase also helped Acer overtake Group Ltd (聯想) as the third-biggest personal computer maker in the world, with a market share of 13.5 percent in the second quarter.
Acer hopes to overtake Hewlett-Packard Co as the world’s leading laptop seller by 2011.
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