COSMETIC SURGERY
The right time for Vietnam
Taiwan should try to establish a stronger presence in the growing cosmetic surgery market in Vietnam, a local research group said yesterday. The time is right for Taiwan to get a foot in the door as Vietnam’s cosmetic surgery market is still in the nascent stage, said Hubert Chih (池煥德), a researcher at the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center. Currently, women in Vietnam do not have much confidence in cosmetic surgery, as the clinics there are usually small ones that seem to lack professionalism, Chih said. For investors interested in getting into the cosmetic surgery business in Vietnam, big chain clinics would be a good option, he said.
SMARTPHONES
Digital cameras impacted
Digital still camera (DSC) shipments by Taiwanese contract makers will fall significantly this year due to the popularity of smartphone cameras, according to Digitimes Research. Shipments of Taiwan-made digital still cameras are expected to drop by an annual 39.4 percent to about 24 million units this year, Digitimes said. Global DSC shipments for this year will total 71 million units, down 28 percent annually, Digitimes forecast. Major camera brands are shifting to more high-end products, such as 18-megapixel and 20-megapixel models, and adding features such as 30x optical zoom lenses, in an effort to stand out from smartphone cameras, it said.
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