Total car sales rose 35.8 percent last month from the previous month after Ghost Month ended on Sept. 4, the latest industry data showed. Local consumers often refrain from buying cars during Ghost Month.
Sales of new vehicles were 28,941 units last month, up from 21,306 units the previous month, statistics showed. The number was up 31.6 percent from a year ago because the Ghost Month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar, fell mostly in September last year.
SLIGHTLY DOWN
From January through last month, total car sales were 272,542 units, down 0.7 percent from a year ago, the industry data showed.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus models in Taiwan, sold 8,540 cars last month, accounting for 29.5 percent of the market share, according to the data.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產) was the runner-up by distributing 3,494 cars last month, accounting for 12.1 percent of market share, and it was followed by China Motor Corp’s (CMC, 中華汽車) 2,992 cars sold last month, which translates to a market share of 10.3 percent.
SUV SALES
Honda Taiwan Co Ltd (台灣本田) sold 1,915 units last month, up 66.2 percent from a month ago and up 106.1 percent from the previous year, led by strong sales of the CR-V sports utility vehicle (SUV).
Honda Taiwan spokesman Chen Chun-liang (陳俊亮) said the company is confident of reaching its sales target of 24,000 cars this year.
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