Taiwan should let its manufacturers of flat panels set up plants in China before semiconductor manufacturers to meet surging demand in that country, the government’s industrial policy-making department said.
“The speed of our opening will be step by step, we won’t open all our investment to China at the same time,” Vivian Lien (連玉蘋), director of the Industrial Development Bureau’s (IDB) industrial policy division said in an interview in Taipei last week.
The bureau, under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, has sent its recommendations to Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) before seeking approval from the Cabinet and lawmakers.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is set to decide this month which industries will be allowed to invest in China. Eased rules on flat-panel makers would let AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) build plants in China, joining South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and LG Display Co, the world’s top suppliers.
Taiwan bars LCD display makers that produce panels larger than 4 inches from investing in China.
“LCD companies have a greater urgency than chip foundries to go to China, because flat panels are a component of consumer-electronics products that need to be assembled and sold within target markets,” Tsai Chung-ping (蔡忠平), head of the IDB’s information technology industries division, said.
Samsung said on Oct. 16 it would spend US$2.3 billion to build a panel factory in China. Two days earlier, LG Display said it would form a US$4 billion venture for an LCD plant in Guangzhou.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained