TAIEX up on rotational buying
The TAIEX extended gains from the previous session yesterday as rotational buying emerged to recoup early losses, focusing on small and medium-sized electronics stocks, such as integrated circuit designers, as well as select old-economy firms, dealers said.
However, the upside was limited as market sentiment remained cautious on renewed concerns over the debt problems in the US in the face of a deadlock between the White House and Capitol Hill in negotiations on raising the debt ceiling, they said.
The benchmark index closed up 23.25 points, or 0.26 percent, at 8,817.49 after moving between 8,754.51 and 8,819.93 on turnover of NT$130.61 billion (US$4.53 billion).
The paper and pulp sector scored the highest gains, finishing up 1.8 percent, while the cement sector fell 1.8 percent, and plastics and chemicals lost 0.8 percent.
No Asian Chromebook plans
Google Inc said yesterday that it has no plans to sell notebook PCs running its Chrome operating system, or Chromebooks, in Taiwan or the rest of Asia, despite the Web-centric laptops having remained bestsellers on Amazon.com for seven weeks.
The Chromebooks are being sold in the US, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.
“We don’t have any plans to sell the devices in the Asia-Pacific [region] in the next few months, as we want to test mature markets in the United States and Europe first, but we can talk if they [Acer] want to sell Chromebooks in Taiwan,” said Vince Wu, a Google senior product manager for the Chrome operating system.
Mac OS X violates S3 patents
Apple Inc’s Mac OS X operating system violates patents held by S3 Graphics Co, while the platform for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad tablet does not, the US International Trade Commission said in a July 1 ruling made public on Tuesday.
Mac computers have an operating system that infringes two S3 patents related to graphics chips, International Trade Commission judge James Gildea said.
S3, which agreed this month to be bought by Taiwanese smartphone company HTC Corp (宏達電), makes image-compression technology. If Gildea’s decision is upheld in a review by the full six-member commission, the commission can ban US imports of some Macs, which generated US$17.5 billion in sales in the last fiscal year, or 27 percent of Apple’s revenue.
Yahoo-Kimo gets into gaming
Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), the Taiwan unit of Yahoo Inc, said on Monday it plans to launch a social gaming service on Wednesday next week and develop it into the largest gaming platform in the Chinese-language speaking world.
The service will initially have a total of 42 free Web-based games related to management, nurturing, adventure and role-playing, and the number will be extended to 100 by the end of this year, the search engine said.
“We’ve realized the potential of the social gaming industry and hope to create a new business model that will make an impact on the sector,” Frank Chen (陳建銘), vice president and managing director of Yahoo-Kimo, said at a press conference introducing the service.
The gaming service will be available on smartphones and tablet PCs in the near term, said Andy Lin (林榮一), president of local online game publisher Gameflier International Corp (遊戲新幹線), which is a partner of Yahoo-Kimo in the new social gaming venture.
Bank reins in NT dollar’s rise
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against the greenback yesterday, rising NT$0.027 to close at NT$28.802 amid lingering fears of a possible failure by the White House and Capitol Hill to reach an agreement to raise the US debt ceiling, dealers said.
To protect Taiwan’s exports, the central bank again stepped in to slow the pace of the local currency’s appreciation after the NT dollar hit an intra-day high, they said.
Turnover totaled US$693 million during the trading session, up from US$687 million the previous 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