E Ink Holdings Inc (元太科技), the world’s biggest e-paper display supplier, yesterday reported record sales of NT$5.33 billion (US$177 million) last month on strong customer demand.
The figure was up 93 percent from the same month last year and 16 percent from the previous month, according to a company statement.
For the first 10 months, sales totaled NT$33.27 billion, a rise of 83 percent from last year.
The company projected that revenue this month would remain high and that fourth-quarter revenue would outpace the third, based on current order visibility.
It posted record earnings in the third quarter of NT$2.25 billion, up 20.6 percent from the prior three months.
“Sales of e-readers will continue to surge as vendors roll out new e-reader models to cater to demand for the Thanksgiving holiday this month and Christmas next month,” the statement said.
E Ink — whose customers include Amazon, the world’s largest online bookstore, and Sony Corp — is confident of revenue expansion thanks to Amazon’s low-price marketing strategy for its tablet, Kindle Fire, which sells for US$199.
The seven-inch Kindle Fire uses E Ink’s fringe field switching (FFS) technology.
Shares of E Ink rose 3.57 percent to close at NT$66.80 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained