E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s biggest e-paper display supplier, said yesterday the company’s board agreed to promote chief technology officer Tsai Chuan-chuan (蔡娟娟) to president, replacing Fu Yu-hsuan (傅幼軒), to cope with the fast-growing e-paper market.
Tsai will be responsible for the development and marketing of E Ink’s e-paper displays, as well as small and medium-sized TFT-LCD panels, the Hsinchu-based company said in a statement.
Fu, who in 2005 joined Prime View International Co — which was renamed E Ink Holdings after it acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based E Ink Corp in 2009 — will become a senior special assistant to company chairman Scott Liu (劉思誠).
Tsai joined E Ink Holdings last year. She was a senior vice president at Quanta Display Inc (廣輝電子) from 2000 to 2006 before the LCD maker was acquired by AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) in 2006. She worked as a professor of photonics at National Chiao Tung University from 2007 to 2009.
E Ink Holdings reported a record net income of NT$4.03 billion (US$136.6 million) and record revenue of NT$25.18 billion last year because of growing demand for e-readers.
To meet the rising demand, the company plans to expand capital expenditure to NT$4.5 billion this year from NT$1.5 billion last year, Liu told an investor conference on Feb. 15.
To match the firm’s increased capital spending and investment demand, as well as to replenish its working capital and repay debt, E Ink Holdings is seeking a syndicated loan of NT$5 billion and has appointed HSBC to manage the loan, E Ink Holdings chief operating officer Lin Feng-rong (林逢榮) said yesterday in a separate statement.
HSBC will also help seek a five-year US$100 million loan for the company’s four subsidiaries to meet their capital needs in the medium term, Lin added.
The company’s board yesterday also approved a plan to inject fresh capital into its Chinese subsidiary in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, as part of its long-term equity investment. It plans to increase the capital of e-paper module maker Transcend Optronics (Yangzhou) Co Ltd (川奇光電) in China by US$80,000, according to the statement.
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