COMPUTERS
Local tablet sales up 110%
Domestic sales of tablet computers rose 110 percent to NT$5.2 billion (US$173.6 million) in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, market research firm GfK Group said yesterday. Budget models priced below NT$10,000 led the growth, GfK senior analyst Julia Chen (陳嬿琦) said, adding that she expected the local tablet market to maintain its upward trend throughout this year following the launch of new products later this year.
TRAVEL
Avis expands local network
Avis Budget Group Inc yesterday announced an expansion of its domestic car rental network, as its local unit teams up with gas station operator National Petroleum Corp (全國加油站) to expand its service points from 20 to more than 30, starting on Saturday. Avis Taiwan had expanded its operations through a cooperation agreement with DoDoHome Parking Management (嘟嘟房) in February and set up service points at all eight high-speed railway stations this month.
LUXURY GOODS
Tittot sees overseas growth
Tittot Co (琉園), a crystal glass maker and designer, expects foreign sales revenue to increase from about 10 percent of its total revenue now to about 15 percent by next year, chairman Wang Yung-shan (王永山) said recently. The company’s revenue was NT$502.45 million last year, up 2.3 percent from a year earlier.
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