Amtran Technology Co (瑞軒科技), which makes LCD TVs for North America television brand Vizio Inc and other companies, yesterday denied it was in talks with South Korean panel maker LG Display Co to sell its plant in Suzhou, China.
The Taipei-based TV maker said that the memorandum of understanding it signed with LG Display last month was aimed at exploring new markets and to develop high-end TV models, such as LED TVs, company spokesman Scotti Chiu (邱裕平) said by telephone.
However, selling the Suzhou plant “is not on our agenda at the moment,” Chiu said.
LG Display and Amtran established Suzhou Raken Technology Ltd (樂軒), an LCD TV assembly venture, in China about two years ago.
Chiu’s comments came after the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday that Amtran aggressively divested component inventories before selling its Suzhou television assembling subsidiary to LG Display, citing unspecified sources.
Amtran has lagged behind global rivals in offering LED TVs because of an insufficient supply of LED panels in the first half of the year caused by an LED chip shortage.
“The supply constraint eased [last month],” Chiu said.
LED TVs are expected to make up 20 percent of its overall LCD TV shipments this year, Chiu said.
Early this year, the company said it aimed to double LCD TV shipments this year to 8 million flat-panel TVs from last year’s 4 million units.
However, Chinese labor shortage and component supply constraints decreased the company’s shipments to about 740,000 units in the first quarter.
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