TAIEX rises on hopes for US
The TAIEX ended higher yesterday on hopes that the US Federal Reserve would come up with more stimulus measures to boost the economy, dealers said.
Speculation was growing that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke would hint at further monetary easing during his report to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, dealers said.
The weighted index closed up 36.96 points, or 0.52 percent, at 7,127.00, after moving between 7,051.76 and 7,133.05, on turnover of NT$69 billion (US$2.3 billion).
Fire blacks Want Want stock
Want Want China Holdings Ltd (中國旺旺控股), China’s largest maker of rice cake, fell the most in almost two weeks in Taipei trading yesterday.
A large warehouse in Hunan Province’s Changsha was destroyed by a fire on Monday, with property loss estimated at more than 100 million yuan (US$15.7 million), the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported. The fire at the packaging factory warehouse scorched an area of 1,500m2, according to a statement posted on the Wangcheng District government Web site. No injuries were reported.
Shares in Want Want dropped 1.2 percent to NT$36.55, narrowing a 23 percent gain for the year.
Digital business forum opens
The Taiwan-Japan Digital Content Industry Forum and Business Matching opened yesterday in Taipei, offering participants an exchange platform to create global business opportunities in the digital content industry.
At the one-day fair, 15 Japanese companies will have 120 one-on-one meetings with Taiwanese companies, double the 60 meetings that were held at last year’s forum in Tokyo, the organizers said.
Among the Japanese attendees are special effects developer Shirogumi Inc, 3D filmmaker NHK Media Technology Inc, printing company Toppan Printing Co and motion picture production company Digital Frontier Inc.
Taiwan’s Industrial Development Bureau has set several goals for the nation’s digital content industry for next year, including reaching an output value of NT$780 billion and creating new investment of NT$100 billion.
The output value of the country’s digital content industry totaled NT$600.3 billion last year, up 14.89 percent from NT$522.5 billion in 2010, the bureau said.
Acer ready for Olympics
Acer Inc (宏碁) said on Monday it would provide athletes with Internet lounges during the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in London, offering broadband Internet access, printer capabilities and social networking applications.
The main lounge will be located at the Stratford Olympic Village and offer free access with 130 computers: 65 fixed stations powered by Acer all-in-one desktops and several portable devices, including Ultrabooks and tablets, the company said in a statement.
Acer will also extend the service to athletes’ villages in Egham, where the rowing and canoe sprint events will be held, and in Weymouth, home to the sailing competition.
As an Olympic sponsor in the computing equipment product category, Acer has provided 13,500 desktops, 2,900 notebooks, 950 servers and storage systems, 13,000 computer monitors and a number of tablet PCs to the event.
NT chalks up another gain
The New Taiwan dollar continued to gain ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.022 to close at NT$29.988 on hopes that the US Federal Reserve would further ease liquidity to boost the US economy, dealers said. Turnover totaled US$564 million.
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