President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商) yesterday announced a new collaboration with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) to sell tablet computers at its 7-Eleven stores.
The nation’s largest convenience store chain operator also launched sales of a new 50-inch LED TV made by Hon Hai for less than NT$20,000 (US$675), after the two started their partnership in TV sales in late June.
Hon Hai manufactures three models of Internet TV for President, under the brand of the convenience store chain’s cartoon mascot, Open, with a total of 15,000 units sold in the first three months.
PCSC is aiming to sell 3,000 units of the 7-inch tablet in the first three months of the sales, with pre-sales beginning today.
“Under our pipeline are five to 10 new products made by Hon Hai, including smartphone products,” said Liu Hong-cheng (劉鴻徵), the head of 7net, President Chain’s online shopping portal.
Liu said the company hopes the second-round sales of TV products reach the levels recorded in the first-round sales.
The portal is set to drive up revenue by 30 percent per year on the back of sales of these new products. Sales via 7net account for only about 1 percent of President’s overall revenue, but it said it would not ignore the rise in online shopping.
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
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