ELECTRONICS
HTC No. 5 in Japan
HTC Corp (宏達電) became the fifth-largest smartphone maker in Japan in the first quarter of the year, taking the position previously held by Samsung Electronics Co of South Korea, market researcher IDC’s Japan branch said on Wednesday. HTC took a 6.6 percent share of the Japanese smartphone market during the January-to-March period thanks to the popularity of its J Butterfly phone, IDC Japan said in a report. Apple Inc remained the top player for the sixth quarter in a row, accounting for 39.6 percent of the market, followed by Japanese firms Sharp Corp (14.6 percent), Sony Corp (13.3 percent) and Fujitsu Ltd (8.3 percent). Overall smartphone shipments in Japan during the quarter grew by 4 percent from a year ago to 6.81 million units, IDC Japan said.
FINANCE
Fubon stock hit by reports
Shares of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) took a beating yesterday after media reported that the company will price its global depositary receipts (GDRs) at a deep discount. According to local media, Fubon Financial is expected to price its GDRs to represent a common share at NT$30, an approximately 25 percent discount on the stock’s five-day average closing price of NT$39.70. Although Fubon Financial released a statement dismissing the reports as mere speculation, selling in the stock continued and the share price fell 1.50 percent to NT$39.45, with 21.01 million shares changing hands.
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