Government targets conventions
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said yesterday that the government would improve Taiwan’s convention and exhibition facilities to develop the nation into a regional convention and exhibition hub.
Shih said the convention and exhibition industry is symbolic of national progress, and Taiwan would compete with Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in this respect.
With Taiwan becoming a major hub in the East Asian region following the normalization of cross-strait relations and the launch of direct air and shipping links with China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has listed the convention and exhibition business as one of the nation’s strategic industries, Shih said.
In line with this policy, the second phase of the Nangang Exhibition Hall project will begin soon and the tender process for the Kaohsiung convention and exhibition center project is also underway, he said.
Samsung, Acer team with AT&T
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and Acer Inc (宏碁) are teaming up with US telecoms giant AT&T Inc to introduce low-priced netbook computers for the holiday shopping season.
AT&T said the Samsung Go and Acer Aspire One, both of which run Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7, will cost US$199 after a mail-in rebate and with the purchase of a two-year AT&T data service contract.
Taiwanese firms like HK
Taiwanese companies have set up a total of 138 regional offices in Hong Kong as of June 1 — the world’s fourth-biggest in terms of presence after their US counterparts at 526, Japanese companies at 447 and UK companies at 213, showed the latest statistics from InvestHK, a department under the territory’s Foreign Direct Investment.
Nineteen Taiwanese companies have located their regional headquarters in Hong Kong, while another 154 companies have set up local offices there, the investment service department said in a press statement on Monday.
“It showed that Taiwan companies have already globalized and connected to the world economy,” the statement said.
It said that in total Hong Kong was home to 1,252 regional headquarters, 2,328 regional offices and 2,817 local offices to companies from around the world.
Despite a 3.3 percent year-on-year drop in the number of regional offices of foreign companies, the headcount of employees hired by these companies grew from 109 last year to 114, InvestHK director-general Simon Galpin said in the statement.
Semiconductors to advance
Global semiconductor sales will probably rise more than expected next year, said chip industry association WSTS Inc, and may return to pre-recession levels, research firm Gartner Inc said.
Chip sales may increase 12.2 percent to US$246.9 billion next year, beating a June estimate of 7.3 percent growth, WSTS said in a statement. Gartner predicts worldwide semiconductor revenue will advance 13 percent to US$255 billion next year, the same level as in last year, a release from the research firm showed.
WSTS predicts semiconductor revenue will fall 11.5 percent to US$220.1 billion this year, while Gartner forecasts an 11.4 drop to US$226 billion. Memory-chip sales may rise 18.6 percent to US$50.9 billion next year, WSTS said.
“The revenue forecast for the commodity memory market — DRAM and NAND flash — has improved because of the stronger demand outlook, which means that pricing has strengthened more than previously forecast,” Bryan Lewis, a research vice president at Gartner, said in the statement.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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