Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s No. 2 telecoms operator, yesterday said it plans to spend NT$5 billion (US$170 million) building “green” cloud-computing facilities in Neihu District (內湖), Taipei.
The phone company is scheduled to complete the construction of the facilities in the first quarter of next year, according to a company statement.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s third-largest telecoms operator, yesterday also said it had invested NT$10 billion building eight cloud-computing Internet data centers.
The company said it is building a ninth one for NT$6 billion in Neihu District this year.
The two providers’ plans to spend billions of NT dollars on their cloud-computing businesses came after their bigger rival, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), said last week it would deepen its collaboration with Intel Corp to capitalize on new growth opportunities in the computer industry.
Several Taiwanese companies, including Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), are moving into cloud computing, either by supplying servers or setting up their own data centers.
Moreover, Google Inc last month said it would triple its investment in a cloud-computing data center in Changhua County to US$300 million, from the US$100 million it announced in September last year.
Google’s Taiwanese center, once its construction is completed early next year and it starts operations by the end of next year, would be the largest of its kind in Asia, with two other centers currently under construction in Hong Kong and Singapore.
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