TAIEX edges up 0.1 percent
The TAIEX was little changed yesterday in thin trading as many investors took to the sidelines, hedging their bets until heavyweight firms on Wall Street report their fourth quarter results, dealers said.
However, with the local market awash in liquidity, investors targeted small and mid-cap stocks, which helped the broader market edge above the previous closing level, they said. The weighted index closed up 7.51 points, or 0.10 percent, at 7,819.15, on turnover of NT$76.08 billion (US$2.62 billion).
Settlement rules ammended
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday that data processing service providers can now entrust banks to perform cross-border foreign exchange settlements for local firms trading overseas.
Department of Commerce Director-General Reed Yu (游瑞德) told a press conference that the ministry amended regulations in October last year after meetings with the central bank, the Financial Supervisory Commission and the Ministry of Justice, allowing data processing service providers to settle foreign exchanges for smaller online sellers.
According to a report by the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (產業情報研究所), Taiwan’s e-commerce market totaled NT$660 billion last year with an annual growth rate of 17 percent. The market is forecast to grow further to pass the NT$1 trillion mark by 2015, the report said. China is currently the largest market for Taiwanese online sellers, followed by Hong Kong and Macau, the report said.
Acer’s shipments fall 9.7%
Acer Inc (宏碁) shipped 33.49 million PC units worldwide last year, down by an annual 9.7 percent, making the company the fourth-largest PC vendor worldwide, market information advisory firm International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday. IDC said in a report that Acer’s market share fell to 9.5 percent last year from 10.2 percent a year earlier.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) finished last year as the world’s fifth-largest PC vendor, with shipments increasing by an annual 17.0 percent to 24.13 million units. Asustek accounted for 6.8 percent of global shipments, up from 5.7 percent.
Coretronic shipments rise
Coretronic Corp (中強光電), which makes backlight modules for flat panels, reported on Thursday that its consolidated revenue grew 3 percent last month to NT$5.66 billion from November’s NT$5.5 billion.
In the fourth quarter of last year, revenue dropped slightly to NT$16.57 billion from NT$16.59 billion in the third quarter. Last year, the company accumulated NT$67.63 billion in revenue, down 12.25 percent from NT$77.06 billion in 2011. Corectronic shipped 68.53 million backlight units last year, up 9 percent from a year ago, while shipments of projectors decreased 18 percent year-on-year to 1.08 million units.
The firm expected backlight shipments to rise slightly this month, while shipments of projectors will fall more than 10 percent because of seasonal factors.
Inotera secures NT$10bn loan
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) said on Thursday that it has obtained NT$10 billion in syndicated loans from 12 banks led by the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行). The loan will be due in three years.
Inotera, a DRAM joint venture between local memory chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) and US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc, said the fund will help strengthen its operations in the medium term and will help it upgrade technologies.
Part of the loan will be used to repay other bank loans, it said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”