The government will spend about NT$75 million (US$2.3 million) to help traditional manufacturing companies integrate information and communication technology, with the aim of increasing their combined production value by at least NT$1.8 billion by the end of this year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The information and communications technology (ICT) project — launched for traditional manufacturing industries for the first time — is also expected to increase private investment by more than NT$100 million by the end of the year, the Industrial Development Bureau said.
A total of 30 projects applying for ICT applications were selected from nearly 100 applications in April, with subsidies of between NT$2 million and NT$5 million granted, a bureau official said.
Among them, Tex-Ray Industrial Co (南緯實業) plans to hook up its smart clothes products — which can monitor heartbeat and provide electrocardiograms — with security systems and medical service providers to develop an individual healthcare service module that is expected to be sold to hospitals and health centers and achieve around NT$80 million in production value in two to three years, the official said.
Sanitary wares supplier Hocheng Corp (HCG, 和成集團) was selected for its plan to transform into a solution provider for all home facilities, which is expected to increase its sales by 5 percent and sharply lower its after-sales costs by 30 percent by the end of this year, the official said.
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