Shipments of large display panels fell 1 percent from the third quarter of last year to 174.8 million units in the fourth quarter as demand for netbook and tablet panels plunged, market intelligence firm WitsView, a LCD research team at TrendForce Corp (集邦科技), said yesterday.
Between October and December, notebook computer shipments dropped 2 percent to 46.8 million units from 47.6 million units in the third quarter because of a shortage of hard-disk drives and the end of inventory stocktaking for the Christmas shopping season, the Taipei-based firm said in a report.
Tablet panel shipments fell 9 percent quarter-on-quarter to 21.6 million units during the period, as Apple Inc began to control its iPad 2 inventory in the fourth quarter and found it difficult to improve yield rates for panels used in the new iPad 3, squeezing the demand for 9.7-inch panels, the report said.
The largest drop in shipments was for netbook computer panels, under 12.1 inches in size, which fell to 6.5 million units in the fourth quarter, a 23 percent drop from the third quarter.
WitsView said that some panel brands and suppliers had transferred research resources and production from netbooks to tablet PCs, touch sensors and other small and medium-sized niche products.
However, TV and monitor panel shipments grew in the final quarter of last year as a result of increased demand in China and the Asia--Pacific region, the firm 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