Eurozone worries impact TAIEX
The TAIEX closed lower yesterday amid renewed concerns over the debt problems in the eurozone. Investors worried that political uncertainty in Spain and Italy would affect financial conditions in Asia, dealers said.
The high-tech sector faced downward pressure, led by smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電), which lost 7 percent, the maximum daily decline, to close at NT$266 after the company gave a cautious outlook for the first quarter of this year, they said.
The weighted index closed down 36.22 points, or 0.46 percent, at 7,886.94, on turnover of NT$76.14 billion (US$2.57 billion).
Japanese took to ITRI
State-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) has increasingly become the place from which Japanese medium-sized businesses seek advice, Japanese media reported on Monday.
Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun said that the ITRI is equipped with up-to-date market information on Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia, helping companies cooperate.
The report noted that the Industrial Technology Investment Corp (ITIC, 創新工業技術移轉), the venture capital arm of the ITRI, established a US$15 million fund with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in 2011. So far, the fund has invested in three Japanese and three Taiwanese companies, the report said.
Catcher to expand in China
Metal casing manufacturer Catcher Technology Co (可成科技) said yesteray that it plans to increase investment in China’s Taizhou City by NT$4.78 billion (US$164.3 million) for expansion to accommodate strong demand for its products.
The announcement came as the company reported that last month’s revenue had increased 17.13 percent year-on-year to NT$3.3 billion from NT$2.82 billion.
Catcher attributed the revenue increase to strong demand for its casings for tablet devices.
However, last month’s figure was down 12.18 percent from NT$3.76 billion in December last year, the result of seasonally low demand for notebooks.
Catcher shares rose 0.76 percent to NT$132.5 before the company’s results were announced.
Reserves hit new highs
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves rose to a new high of US$406.56 billion as of the end of last month, up US$3.39 billion from a month earlier, the central bank said yesterday.
The returns from foreign exchange reserves management was the major factor responsible for the increase, as was the appreciation of the euro against the US dollar, Lin Sun-yuan (林孫源), director-general of the central bank’s department of foreign exchange, said during a press briefing.
The market value of securities investment and the NT dollar deposits held by foreign portfolio investors at the end of last month reached US$223.6 billion.
Taiwan maintained its position of holding the world’s fourth-largest foreign exchange reserves, behind China, Japan and Russia, the central bank said.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.005 to close at NT$29.585 after the greenback recouped its earlier losses on the back of intervention by the central bank, dealers said.
After the NT dollar’s appreciation a day earlier, the central bank resumed its efforts to drag down the local currency in a bid to preserve the country’s global competitiveness, they said.
Turnover totaled US$678 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],”
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
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