TAIEX nears 8,000 mark
The TAIEX continued to move up yesterday as gains posted by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), along with news that the government will release funds into the market, vaulted the index close to the 8,000 point mark, dealers said.
With TSMC’s momentum continuing and the news that the government will release NT$135 billion (US$4.52 billion) into the market before May 20, buying enthusiasm continued from Friday’s session, when the market reacted positively on the chipmaker’s strong second quarter forecast to close at above 7,900 points.
The weighted index closed up 39.58 points, or 0.50 percent, at 7,970.38, on turnover of NT$75.676 billion.
TSMC rose 1.8 percent to close at NT$108.5 after the company forecast in an investor conference on Thursday that its consolidated sales for the second quarter could range between NT$154 billion and NT$156 billion, up between 16 and 17.5 percent from the previous quarter.
DSC shipments fall 44%
Total digital still camera (DSC) shipments by Taiwanese contract makers fell 44 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year, affected by the rise of smartphones, which reduced global demand for digital cameras, Digitimes Research reported yesterday.
Shipments dropped from 8 million units in the fourth quarter of last year to 5.74 million, representing a 28 percent decline from the previous quarter, Digitimes said, attributing the slump to a drop in global demand amid the increasing popularity of smartphones and a time-out between the end of old DSC model shipments and the launch of new models.
Of the DSC shipments in the first quarter, 20.7 percent were 20-megapixel CCD models, up by 18.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, Digitimes said.
Asustek to launch hybrid
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) is scheduled to launch its new smartphone-tablet hybrid device in Japan on Thursday in an effort to win back consumer interest in smaller tablet computers, such as Apple Inc’s iPad mini.
The 7-inch Fonepad, featuring Intel Corp’s new Atom Z2420 1.2GHz low-power processor and 3G cellular connectivity, will hit Japanese stores at a cost of ¥29,800 (US$298) for an 8GB model, Asustek said yesterday.
According to sales rankings by BCN Inc, a Japanese research firm that tracks retail sales of most consumer items in Japan, Apple saw its share of Japan’s tablet market rise for the second consecutive month last month to 51.2 percent, while Asustek fell from a peak of 47.7 percent in January to only 28.8 percent last month.
Singapore FTA talks continue
Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) said on Saturday on the sidelines of an APEC ministerial meeting that Taiwan and Singapore are continuing talks on signing a free-trade agreement (FTA) and results are expected to come soon.
Chang made the remarks while attending the 19th APEC trade-related ministerial meeting, which opened in Surabaya, Indonesia, on Saturday.
He said that the two countries have been in negotiations and have reached consensus on most of the FTA’s content.
NT dollar falls against US dollar
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.03 to close at NT$29.870. Turnover totaled US$536 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
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