Auto sales in China, the world’s largest car market, rose by 4.57 percent last month from a year earlier, data from an industry group showed yesterday.
A total of 1.27 million vehicles were sold in the country last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a statement.
That brought total sales in the first two months of the year to 3.16 million units, up 9.71 percent from a year earlier, the association said.
Growth in passenger car sales — which account for most of the country’s auto sales — is expected to slow this year due to measures imposed by some major cities to restrict the number of vehicles on the road, plus the withdrawal of policies that encouraged -automobile purchases.
“We think the growth in both sales and production would not increase as fast as what we saw in the previous two years,” the association said.
ALMOST A MILLION
Passenger vehicle sales increased 2.57 percent year-on-year last month to 967,200 units, it said.
In the January-February period, 2.5 million passenger vehicles were sold in the country, up 10.5 percent from a year earlier, it said.
China overtook the US in 2009 to become the world’s biggest car market.
Auto sales in the country rose more than 32 percent last year to a record 18.06 million units as the economy quickly powered out of the financial crisis to grow by 10.3 percent last year, its fastest pace since 2007.
With economic overheating now a growing concern, the Chinese government has phased out policy incentives such as subsidies for purchases of small-engine cars.
Some cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, have even introduced measures such as annual quotas of new car license-plates to restrict purchases as part of efforts to ease chronic gridlock and control air pollution.
YULON
In related news, the largest Taiwanese automaker Yulon Group (裕隆集團) said on Tuesday that it posted a near-record high total revenue of NT$15 billion (US$500 million) last year and plans to launch four new models and invest NT$13 billion to improve its manufacturing capability this year.
Speaking at a press conference, Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) president Chen Kuo-rong (陳國榮) said last year’s profits were the highest in five years and the company would recruit an additional 1,200 employees to meet the growth in demand.
Yulon Group sold more than 98,000 cars in 2009, earning a total revenue of NT$6 billion and gaining a market share of 31 percent, Chen said, adding that profits from car sales accounted for more than 40 percent of the group’s income.
This year, the company expects to sell 107,500 cars nationwide, for a 35 percent share of the local market of between 330,000 and 360,000 units.
Yulon Group plans to invest NT$500 million to add 18 more dealerships that will sell cars under its Luxgen brand.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS