The average price of Taiwan’s bicycle exports increased to boost their total sales value in the first seven months of this year, helping offset the impact of falling bike exports as a result of the global economic slowdown, statistics showed yesterday.
According to statistics released by the Taiwan Bicycle Exporters’ Association, the average selling price of locally made bicycles shipped overseas rose 8.5 percent from a year earlier to US$384.81 (NT$11,525) in the past seven months.
As a result, the export value of bicycles during the period gained 4.2 percent year-on-year to reach US$945.62 million, even though the number of exported units fell 3.96 percent to 2.46 million units, the association said.
The association said the increase in the average selling price reflected Taiwanese bicycle makers’ efforts to manufacture high-end products by improving quality.
In the first seven months, the EU was the largest importer of Taiwanese bicycles after buying 1.43 million units, down 12.51 percent from a year earlier as lingering debt problems impacted the region’s consumption, the association said.
However, the value of bicycles sold to the EU during the same period rose 3.01 percent to US$430 million with the average selling price up 17.74 percent, the association said.
The statistics indicated the value of Taiwanese bicycles sold to North America went down 5.34 percent from a year earlier to US$238 million with the average selling price falling 9.5 percent.
The number of Taiwanese bicycles shipped to North America rose 4.69 percent from a year earlier to 461,995 units, according to the statistics.
The value of Taiwanese bikes exported to China in the seven-month period rose 287.88 percent to US$24 million, while the number of locally-made bikes rose 298.55 percent to 49,995 units, the association said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to