Plastics, food boost TAIEX
Taiwanese shares closed up 0.36 percent yesterday, led by plastics and food stocks, dealers said.
The TAIEX index rose 27.41 points to 7,714.56 on turnover of NT$113.09 billion (US$3.51 billion).
Losers led gainers by 1,292 to 1,200 with 324 stocks unchanged.
“The focus is pretty much on the second-tier sectors that trade at technically reasonable levels,” said Tom Tang of Masterlink Investment Advisory (元富投顧), referring to plastics and food shares.
He expected the market to trade in the 7,500-to-7,800 range in the run-up to local elections on Dec. 5.
Color e-book reader launched
A Taiwan-based technology company launched on Monday the world’s first color e-book device dedicated to displaying illustrated story content for children.
Peter Chen (陳振田), chairman of Aiptek International Inc (天瀚科技), said the product is like a storybook that talks and has been designed to enable children to enjoy e-books.
The product comes with 20 digitized illustrated story books and sells for NT$6,900, the company said.
It has a 1GB memory that can accommodate up to 50 books, which allows users to buy more stories online at prices that are only 70 percent of their print equivalents, the company said.
The device can also be used as a digital photo frame, it added.
LSI patent claims reviewed
LSI Corp’s patent-infringement claims against Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), Spansion Inc and five other makers of computer chips will be reviewed by US trade officials.
A judge with the US International Trade Commission in Washington had said the LSI patent was invalid. In a notice posted on its Web site on Monday, the ITC said it will review part of the judge’s determination.
The other companies are Tower Semiconductor Inc of Israel and its Jazz Semiconductor unit; Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) of Taiwan; Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (宏力半導體) of China; and Integrated Device Technology Inc of San Jose, California.
Nokia axes 220 jobs
Nokia Corp said yesterday it was axing 220 jobs at research and development units in Japan as the world’s largest mobile phone maker continues to cut costs.
Last week it announced 330 job cuts in Finland and Denmark at its research and development operations that globally employ 17,000 workers.
Nokia said it will continue “significant sourcing activities” in Japan.
The cuts will not affect Japanese operations of Nokia Siemens Networks, the company’s network infrastructure sector, nor Vertu, Nokia’s luxury handset line, the company said.
Nokia employs 123,350 people worldwide. Last year, it sold 468 million handsets, up 7 percent from 2007.
HannStar signs with LG
Local liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel maker HannStar Display Corp (瀚宇彩晶) signed a cross-licensing pact with South Korea’s LG Display Co for thin-film-transistor LCD, the Taiwanese panel-maker said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, without giving financial details.
NT drops against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange Tuesday, declining NT$0.021 to close at NT$32.288.
A total of US$663 million changed hands during the day’s trading.
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