International Games System Co (IGS, 鈊象電子), the nation’s largest arcade and online game developer, yesterday announced an exclusive partnership agreement with the nation’s largest telecoms carrier, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), after launching a new online game.
The company, based in Wugu Industrial Park, New Taipei City (新北市), said during a signing ceremony that it would collaborate with Chunghwa to build the largest online gaming platform in the nation, and forecast that sales of its online games for mobile platforms would double next year from this year.
Steve Chiang (姜伯威), manager of IGS’ arcade game division, said one of the company’s most popular games — Salon Boss I, an interactive social game with the player acting as the owner of a beauty salon — has attracted more than 300,000 iPad and iPhone users in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau who have downloaded it through Apple Inc’s App Store since the beginning of the year.
Earlier this month, IGS launched an updated version of the popular online game not only for Apple’s App Store, but also for Google Inc’s Play store and Chunghwa’s Hami Apps for Android-device users. So far, more than 100,000 Taiwanese have downloaded the game, Chiang said.
“As the global software market is expanding and growing at a rapid pace, we are gradually shifting our target to some of our key application software segments and have developed many online game products for mobile platforms,” Chiang told reporters after the ceremony.
According to a report released by the government-funded Institute for Information Industry in April, the number of apps downloads in Taiwan was expected to increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 63 percent from 11 million in 2010 to 77 million in 2014.
Arcade games sales currently account for about 62 percent of IGS’ revenue, while online games sales represented 38 percent of the total, the company said on its Web site.
“We expect our collaboration with Chunghwa will help us explore the software market more easily, and are optimistic that the worldwide mobile devices market will continue to grow next year and that sales of our gaming applications will double,” Chiang said.
IGS plans to launch Korean and English versions of Salon Boss II next month to meet strong demand from South Korean and US customers.
The company also plans to sign agreements with the top three telecoms carriers in South Korea — SK Telecom, KT Corp and LG U+ — next month to become the first Taiwanese online game developer to enter that country’s application market, Chiang said.
As for introducing Windows 8 versions of its games, Chiang said the company had no plans to develop any product for the new operating system in the near future.
IGS stock closed unchanged at NT$112 in Taipei trading yesterday. It has dropped 44.83 percent since the beginning of the year, underperforming the GRETAI Securities Market index’s 9.35 percent rise.
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
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
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