Search engine giant Google Inc yesterday said it is planning to release more Web-centric Chromebook laptops, in collaboration with its Taiwanese partners, by the end of the year.
“As we go through later this year, you’ll see us in a better, stronger presence in the market place,” Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome at Google, said in a teleconference with local media.
Pichai said that his company would also collaborate with Taiwanese original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and original design manufacturers (ODM). He did not offer details of the plan.
In May last year, Google launched two notebook PCs running its Chrome operating system, or Chromebooks, in cooperation with South Korean Samsung Electronics Co and Taiwan-based Acer Inc (宏碁), to capitalize on the growing popularity of its Chrome browser.
Last week, Google released its new Chromebook with the aim of providing what it called better performance and user experience as the company steps up its efforts to take on Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp.
The laptops made by Samsung will let users navigate Web-based applications more easily by providing tools for accessing Gmail or other software outside the browser. The devices, which use faster Intel Corp chips, are about three times as quick as the first generation of Chromebooks.
The latest Chromebooks include a bar across the bottom of the screen that lets users access Web applications, similar to what’s available on Mac or Windows machines. Other improvements include built-in features for viewing Microsoft Office software, such as Word and Excel files.
Users will also be able to easily access remote Windows computers, Google 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts