Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world’s biggest maker of notebook computers by shipments, climbed to its highest level in more than nine years in Taipei trading after Motorola Inc said it sold its European modem business to the Taipei-based company.
Compal added 3.4 percent to close at NT$48.05 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the highest since April 18, 2000, compared with a 1.14 percent gain by the benchmark TAIEX index. The volume of 59 million shares was more than double the 25 million daily average over the past 90 days.
Motorola said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday that it sold its Europe, Middle East and Africa unit to Compal, without giving a value for the transaction.
The acquisition will help boost Compal’s annual revenue by NT$6.3 billion (US$198 million), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information.
Compal chief financial officer Gary Lu (呂清雄) declined to say how much the unit would contribute to sales. The acquisition, for less than US$300 million, was made by Compal Broadband Networks (鋐寶), Lu said.
“Compal has a small non-notebook business, so the market is excited by this idea,” Sinopac Securities Corp (永豐金證券) said in a report yesterday. “In two or three years, the shipment growth for notebook makers will shrink, so they need to find new businesses.”
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