High-tech firms sap TAIEX
The TAIEX pulled back yesterday as local high-tech firms in the Apple supply chain encountered losses amid concerns over a supply shortage of the iPhone 5, dealers said.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), which assembles iPhones and iPads for Apple, fell 3.53 percent to close at NT$90.20, while metal casing supplier Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準) lost 3.45 percent to end at NT$112.00.
Largan Precision Co (大立光), a smartphone camera lens maker, shed 6.29 percent to NT$596.00 and flexible printed circuit board supplier Flexium Interconnect Inc (台郡) ended down 7 percent at NT$114.50.
Dealers said lingering worries about economic fundamentals also added downward pressure to the broader market, dragging down the index below the 7,700-point mark by the end of the session.
The weighted index closed down 64.50 points, or 0.83 percent, at 7,669.63, on turnover of NT$84.22 billion (US$2.87 billion).
USTR delegation coming
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) will send a delegation to Taiwan next month in preparation for a resumption of major trade talks between Taiwan and the US, Representative to the US Jason Yuan (袁健生) said yesterday.
Yuan said that following a just-concluded visit to Taiwan by Atul Keshap, US senior official for APEC, the USTR would also send a delegation for technical consultations on a resumption of talks under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).
“The exact arrival time will be announced by the United States,” he said.
Yuan said among the issues up for discussion will include a bilateral investment agreement, technical trade barriers, trade facilitation, e-commerce, intellectual property rights protection and bilateral cooperation.
Chimei Innolux plans bond sale
The nation’s No. 1 LCD panel maker, Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), is scheduled to hold a special shareholder’s meeting on Nov. 14 to seek an approval for the sale of NT$12 billion corporate bonds, according to a company filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The company’s proposed name change would also be on the meeting agenda, the panel maker said after a board meeting yesterday. Innolux Display Corp (群創光電), the company’s previous name prior to its merging with Chimei Optoelectronics Corp in 2010, is one of options, a company official said.
On Tuesday, Chimei said it has raised NT$5.4 billion by selling 600 million common shares to existing shareholders, including Chimei Corp (奇美實業), Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) and Hon Hai Group’s chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘).
EU urged to boost trade ties
The EU needs to strengthen economic ties with its key trade partners, including Taiwan, if it wants to emerge from its financial crisis, Philippe de Buck, director-general of Business Europe, said at the International Business Forum in Taipei on Tuesday.
He said that although open markets are a key driver for investment and job creation, EU companies still face many barriers in accessing foreign markets.
According to Business Europe, Taiwan is the EU’s fifth-largest export market in East Asia and the 14th overall. It is also the EU’s fourth-largest source of imports in East Asia.
NT dollar dips
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.046 to close at NT$29.497 after the central bank extended efforts to boost the greenback, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$896 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
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