TAIEX falls amid concerns
The TAIEX closed lower yesterday amid lingering concerns over economic fundamentals at home and abroad, but buying in some large-cap stocks prevented the broader market from falling further, dealers said.
Led by PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which reported better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter, certain electronics heavyweights attracted bargain hunting after recent consolidation, the dealers said.
Asustek closed up 7 percent, the maximum daily permitted increase, to close at NT$294.50 after reporting NT$6.4 in earnings per share for the second quarter, beating a market expectation of NT$6.
The weighted index closed down 19.71 points, or 0.27 percent, at 7,371.44, after moving between 7,360.10 and 7,404.94 on turnover of NT$73.47 billion (US$2.45 billion).
Airline seeks storytellers
It may be unusual to require flight attendants to have good storytelling skills, but that is exactly what China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) is seeking, as indicated in a job advertisement yesterday.
“Great storytellers wanted,” reads the advertisement by CAL, Taiwan’s largest international carrier.
In its latest recruitment drive, the airline said it wants flight attendants who can share their travel stories with passengers on flights to well-known holiday spots such as Bali in Indonesia, in addition to introducing the food served on board and selling duty-free items to passengers. The ad invites interested people with a college degree and a TOEIC test score of more than 550 to apply on the airline’s Web site between Sept. 3 and 16.
HTC unveils smartphone
HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone maker, unveiled its Desire X smartphone yesterday at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin as the latest addition to its affordable product line.
The 4-inch Desire X, featuring a dual-core 1 GHz processor from Qualcomm Inc and Beats Audio technology, enables fast activation of its camera within one second and single-press continuous shooting to capture multiple photos of fast-paced action.
The Android-powered smartphone will be available in selected markets across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific regions from September this year, the Taoyuan-based company said. The product will start at NT$10,900 (US$364) when it goes on sale in Taiwan next month, HTC said.
Cloud survey results out
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) is one of the top cloud technology companies operating in the country, according to a survey by the market information advisory firm International Data Corp (IDC).
The survey released on Wednesday showed Chunghwa Telecom was the third-best-known brand in both the private and public cloud sectors in Taiwan, the IDC said.
A public cloud is a computing environment based on the standard model in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the public over the Internet.
A private cloud is a computing environment within the boundaries of an organization and for its exclusive use. Google Inc was ranked the best-known brand in the public cloud area in Taiwan, followed by Amazon.com Inc, the survey said.
Meanwhile, the US-based VMware Inc took the title as the best-known brand in the private cloud area in Taiwan, followed by Microsoft Corp, the survey said.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.005 to close at NT$29.986. Turnover totaled about US$591 million during the trading session.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained