Taiwan’s financial companies are capitalizing on NBA sensation Jeremy Lin (林書豪), who has received widespread media coverage over the past two weeks because of his remarkable performances.
Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) yesterday said it is organizing an online draw in which winners can win a basketball with Lin’s autograph on it if they visit its Facebook page to answer questions about the New York Knicks point guard.
So far the draw, which runs through Sunday, has attracted 4,000 participants, the insurer said.
The insurer’s parent, Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控), is the NBA’s sole official partner in Taiwan. Last summer, it invited Lin to join its basketball training camp in Taipei and funded trips for fans to visit Lin in New York.
TAKING BETS
Taiwan Sport Lottery Corp (運彩科技), a subsidiary of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), said yesterday it would accept bets on every Knicks game.
The lottery issuer, a drag on its parent’s earnings for the past two years, has seen ticket sales surge by more than NT$100 million (US$3.3 million) in the past 10 days alone, thanks to the fast-spreading “Linsanity,” the company said in a statement.
THINKING AHEAD
However, long before Lin rocked the world with his rise in the NBA, a sports company owner in China had the idea that the name would one day be a sensation in the sports world and trademarked it in the China market.
Yu Minjie (虞敏潔), owner of the company in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, last year registered “Jeremy S.H.L 林書豪” as a trademark, according to a report on the Web site of the People’s Daily.
Yu spent 4,460 yuan (US$708) to obtain a 10-year ownership of the trademark, which he is allowed to use on products ranging from apparel, shoes and caps to balls, gaming devices and toys, the report said.
Now that the Harvard graduate is a big star, various enterprises have revealed their intention to buy the trademark from Yu as the “Linsanity” craze spreads, the report said.
However, Yu said she had not yet received any bids for the trademark.
The 23-year-old New York Knicks guard, the NBA’s first and only Taiwanese American, applied on Monday last week to trademark “Linsanity.” He was reported to have applied with an application fee of US$1,625 for the use of the name on apparel and other products, including mascot figures, drinks and backpacks.
The People’s Daily Online report cited Lu Ming (陸銘), a Chinese lawyer, as saying that if Lin wants to use Yu’s trademark in China, he would have to obtain authorization from her company.
Forbes magazine has assessed the Lin brand to be valued at about US$16 million, the report 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