MOEA approves subsidies
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said on Saturday that it has approved 43 innovative business development projects to receive its subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The 43 newly approved projects include eight from the chemical engineering sector, three from the biotech industry, 10 from the service sector, five from the information and communications sector, six from the electronics sector, and 11 from the mechanical industry.
The 43 applicants are expected to be granted more than NT$140 million (US$4.73 million) in subsidies for their innovation development projects, the ministry said.
Since 1999, the ministry has approved 4,817 applications from the SMEs and granted a total of NT$9.2 billion in subsidies.
Line app moving into China
Japanese mobile messaging service Line plans to expand to China this year following its success in Taiwan and Thailand, according to company executives.
NHN Japan Corp chief executive officer Akira Morikawa said on Wednesday last week that Taiwan and Thailand have become the two largest overseas markets for the Line app, with Line users exceeding 10 million each in the two countries, and the company is hoping to tap into China’s market this year.
Since its launch in June 2011, Line has gained 100 million users in 231 countries, and the fast-growing messaging service seeks to hit 300 million to 400 million users by the end of this year.
Touch panel shipments up
Global touch panel shipments are expected to grow more than 30 percent this year from last year on the back of solid demand, market informational advisory firm Displaybank said on Saturday.
In a research report, Displaybank said that the rapid growth in touch panel shipments largely reflects the rising popularity of smartphones and tablet computers.
According to the advisory firm, touch panel shipments are expected to exceed 1.8 billion units this year, up 34 percent from last year, when shipments totaled 1.35 billion units.
Displaybank said it is likely that touch panel shipments will rise further in 2016 to top 2.75 billion units, as more electronics gadgets are equipped with touch panels.
Smartphones to get thinner
This year, more smartphones will use in-cell technology, a solution that can make touch panels thinner, as manufacturers try to meet growing consumer demand, according to a forecast by the Taiwan Industrial Economics and Knowledge Research Center (IEK).
As consumers prefer lighter and thinner handheld devices, more smartphone makers will use such technology, the research center said in a report.
According to the IEK forecast, global sales of smartphones will reach 2.02 billion units this year, 25 percent, or 170 million units, of which will use in-cell technology.
The report projected that some 260 million smartphones will use the technology in 2015, while 410 million units will use it by 2017, a five-year compound annual growth rate of 25 percent.
Car prices expected to drop
The price of automobiles is expected to drop in Taiwan if the Japanese yen continues to depreciate, Morgan Stanley said.
Taiwanese auto companies mainly source components and vehicles from Japan and could benefit from the declining yen, Morgan Stanley said in a research note published on Monday last week.
In addition, Taiwan’s government has noted that it may ask companies benefiting from the yen’s depreciation to lower their selling prices, the brokerage said.
“Our checks suggest that the consensus among auto companies is that they may consider adjusting prices once the yen depreciates against the US dollar to the 95 to 100 level,” Morgan Stanley analyst Terence Cheng said in Taipei.
“Longer term, we believe a depreciating yen could help ease cost pressures on Taiwan’s auto companies or stop requests by Japanese suppliers to raise prices which happened during the period the yen was appreciating,” Cheng added.
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