INVESTMENTS
US firms to invest US$200m
Seven US companies are expected to make new investments totaling more than US$200 million in Taiwan over the next three years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. A delegation led by Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭) that is visiting the US until Monday is expected to sign the letters of investment intent with the seven companies, the ministry said. They include IC designer and maker Smart Modular Technologies, game developer Green Throttle, computer storage and data management firm NetApp, engineering design company De Amertek Corp and accessories retailer Claire’s. The other two, unidentified companies are a supplier of flat-panel and IC materials and a manufacturer of parts and components, the ministry said.
TELECOM
HTC to gift 100,000 tablets
HTC Corp (宏達電) chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) on Thursday announced an initiative at a World Bank roundtable to donate 100,000 HTC tablets to young women in Asia-Pacific countries in a bid to empower them to define a greater role for themselves. Tablets are a very powerful learning platform that emphasize science and technology, Wang said at the discussion on the Equal Futures Partnership, which is dedicated to promoting women’s rights. The Taiwanese smartphone maker was the only Asian private business invited to attend the forum sponsored by the World Bank at its headquarters in Washington.
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