CHT to invest US$45m
Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), Taiwan’s largest phone operator, said it will invest at least US$45 million to build a new undersea cable with Google Inc, China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) and KDDI Corp.
The Southeast Asia Japan Cable is expected to be finished by the end of 2013, it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Other members of the consortium include Singapore Telecommunications Ltd and Globe Telecom Inc, it said.
Taiwan International Standard Electronics Ltd (台灣國際標準電子), Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications LLC and NEC Corp won a US$36 million to US$40 million contract to lay the cable, it said in a separate exchange filing.
Higher natural gas use forecast
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Tai-power, 台電) expects its natural gas consumption to rise to a record this year as electricity demand climbs.
Taipower will use an estimated 7.1 million tonnes of natural gas, 12 percent more than last year, chief engineer Roger Lee (李鴻洲) said in an interview yesterday. Oil demand is forecast to advance 18 percent to 2.34 million kiloliters, or 14.7 million barrels.
“Gas and oil consumption will rise more,” Lee said.
There’s little room for increased generation from coal-fired stations and reactors as the company is already operating them almost continuously, Lee said.
Taipower’s coal consumption will probably rise 4.5 percent this year to 27.1 million tonnes, he said.
Exports could go back up
The nation’s exports could be up in the following month on the back of orders of memory chips, automobile parts and petrochemicals products transferred from Japan, Barclays Capital said in a note yesterday.
Taiwan’s exports to Japan fell 2.5 percent year-on-year to US$1.47 billion last month, the Ministry of Finance’s data showed.
Barclays Capital said it expected exports to other markets to remain strong in the following months by orders transferred from Japan amid continuing aftershocks and radioactive worries.
ACC breaks ground for plant
A subsidiary of Taiwanese flat-panel display maker AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) held a groundbreaking ceremony for its second solar wafer plant on Monday, with mass production slated to begin in the first quarter of next year.
AUO said in a statement that the subsidiary, AUO Crystal Corp (ACC, 友達晶材), will establish the plant at the Central Taiwan Science Park’s (中部科學園區) Houli base and that it will have a first-phase combined manufacturing capacity of monocrystalline ingots and monocrystalline wafers that is expected to amount to about 250 megawatts per year.
Computer expo attracts 460,000
The Spring Computer Exhibition closed in Taipei on Monday after attracting about 460,000 visitors during its five-day run, the most since the show began allowing free entry to the public in 2007.
The tech fair, now entering its 25th year, had been attended by between 180,000 and 200,000 visitors before it stopped selling tickets in 2007 to increase sales of the electronic devices on display, said Candy Wang (王明玉), project manager of the Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會), which organized the event.
The annual event, which drew 150 exhibitors this year, improved on its attendance from the 437,000 visitors it attracted last year, according to the TCA.
Digital cameras remained the best-selling item, with sales growth of 30 percent from last year, while notebook sales rose 20 to 25 percent thanks to the launch of Intel’s new Sandy Bridge chipset, the TCA 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