TAIEX recovers by close
The nation’s benchmark index recovered yesterday from a sell-off in the past two trading sessions, as the bellwether high-tech sector staged a technical rebound, but turnover remained thin amid lingering concerns over the global economic climate and the debt problems in Europe, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 116.26 points, or 1.33 percent, at 8,829.21, after moving between 8,737.24 and 8,836.51, on turnover of NT$85.73 billion (US$2.97 billion).
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電), a market heavyweight, ended a two-day losing streak, which encouraged buying to spread to the electronics sector and across the board to push the index higher until the end of the session. HTC rose 5.99 percent to end at NT$1,150 after a 13.2 percent fall over the previous two sessions, dealers said.
Yageo shares post sizeable drop
Yageo Corp (國巨) saw its shares slide the most in a year yesterday after the Chinese-language Commercial Times cited an unidentified person at the Financial Supervisory Commission as saying the regulator may reject an application by Orion Investment Co (遨睿投資) to acquire Yageo on concerns the rights of minority shareholders won’t be fully protected.
The stock slumped dropped 6.4 percent to NT$14.75, the biggest drop since May 25 last year. Yageo said it has not received any document from regulators and can not comment on the matter.
South Star project approved
The Council for Economic Planning and Development on Monday approved the South Star land development proposal in constructing infrastructure on reclaimed land in the Kaohsiung Free Trade Zone.
The project, proposed by the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau, will build an industrial park in the Port of Kaohsiung and help it gain certification from the London Metal Exchange, the council said in a report.
The proposal still has to pass an environmental impact assessment before construction can officially begin, the council said, adding the plan is expected to be completed by December 2014.
Most workers dissatisfied: poll
About 75 percent of Taiwanese workers polled in a recent survey said they are dissatisfied with their jobs because of lower-than-expected wages, according to a survey results released on Monday by Taipei-based manpower agency 1111 Job Bank.
Among the respondents, 79.25 percent said they were in the wrong jobs or were working in the wrong sectors, with the remainder saying they have never made any wrong job choices, according to the results.
In terms of the major reasons respondents felt they were in the wrong jobs, “low salary” ranked in first place with a 49.21 percent share, while 40.48 percent answered “limited career development” and 35.71 percent cited “too much work pressure,” the results show.
Quanta assembling MacBook Air
The latest model of Apple’s ultra-light MacBook Air is scheduled to hit the market by the end of this month, with about 90 percent of the computers to be assembled by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), a Taipei-based business daily reported yesterday.
The first shipment of the next-generation MacBook Air — the thinnest line of Apple’s notebook computers, shorn of a hard drive and disc player — will be 380,000 units, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said.
NT dollar closes up NT$0.042
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.042 to close at NT$28.850. Turnover totaled US$989 million during the trading session.
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