FINANCE
TAIEX up on Wall St gains
The TAIEX surged past the 8,000-point mark yesterday, as investors took their cues from Wall Street’s gains overnight, dealers said yesterday. Apple-concept stocks staged a rebound after the US giant reported solid first-quarter results, they said. The weighted index closed up 80.94 points, or 1.02 percent, at 8,023.71, on turnover of NT$82.59 billion (US$2.77 billion). Among the Apple-concept stocks, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) rose 2.49 percent to close at NT$78.10, while smartphone camera lens supplier Largan Precision Co (大立光) gained 1.44 percent to end at NT$706.
ELECTRONICS
Large panels likely to fall
Global shipments of large-sized panels are likely to fall this month after peaking last month, researcher WitsView said in a report. With strong demand ahead of the May 1 Workers’ Day holiday ending this month, large panel shipments for the month are likely to fall below last month’s 68.6 million units, WitsView said. Shipments of TV, monitor, notebook and tablet panels are expected to dip by 5 percent, 7 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent respectively from the previous month, WitsView said.
EDUCATION
New job site for students
TheStudentRanking.com of Germany yesterday launched a Chinese-language online jobseeking site for students in Taiwan, as the company extends its reach to 14 countries with Web sites in 10 languages. Country manager Hannah Chou (周涵) said the company’s platform offers more in-depth analyses than other jobseeking sites as it calculates students’ achievements quantitatively. Students can access the online site for free.
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