A direct sales company dealing in health care and personal care products based in Nanjing, China, has decided to open a branch office in Taipei, a local travel agent said yesterday.
“Joymain Sci and Tech Development Co (中脈科技), one of the largest direct marketing enterprises in China’s biotech sector, is scheduled to open its Taiwan branch June 17,” said Ivan Lin (林聰敏), vice president of China Travel Service (Taiwan) (台灣中國旅行社).
In connection with the opening of the office in Taipei, Joymain chairman Wang Youshan (王尤山) will lead nearly 1,000 of the company’s sales representatives on a five-day incentive trip to Taiwan starting today, Lin said.
“Joymain salespeople from all over China are scheduled to arrive in Taipei on Monday [today] in several groups,” said Lin, whose company helped arrange the incentive tour.
Unlike similar tours to Taiwan offered by other Chinese direct marketing companies in the past, which invariably focused on visiting popular tourist destinations and enjoying local food, the Joymain tour will highlight environmentally friendly themes, Lin said.
The group will participate in a sports competition at the Flying Cow Leisure Farm (飛牛牧場) in Miaoli County tomorrow and go on a bicycle tour along the banks of the Danshui River in Bali Township (八里) on the outskirts of Taipei on Thursday. They will also visit the Shihsanhang Museum of Archeology in the same neighborhood.
“We hope these activities will help expand Chinese tourist itineraries. The introduction of lesser-known destinations will help Chinese visitors understand that Taiwan’s tourist attractions are not limited to just a few landmarks such as Alishan (阿里山) and Sun Moon Lake (日月潭),” Lin said.
Classifying Joymain staff as high-end tourists, Lin said they would stay at four-star or five-star hotels and would also tour other “must see” sightseeing destinations for Chinese visitors, such as the National Palace Museum, Taipei 101, Yehliu, Sun Moon Lake and Chung Tai Chan Monastery.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to