SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC is global innovator
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) was named by Thomson Reuters yesterday as one of the top 100 global innovators this year, becoming the first Taiwanese company to make it onto the prestigious list since it was established in 2011. This year’s list featured 32 companies from Asia, including 28 from Japan and three from South Korea. The list, which was released yesterday, includes 45 US companies, 22 European companies and one Canadian company. Although China has the world’s most patents, no Chinese companies made the list because they did not do well in the categories of globalization and influence, Thomson Reuters said.
TECHNOLOGY
Google winners named
Google Inc’s Taiwan branch yesterday announced the winners of a digital marketing competition designed to help expand the sector’s workforce. Google Taiwan said it selected nearly 1,400 students and 200 representatives of startup companies from more than 4,500 applicants to be trained under the project. In the contest, 253 teams formed by 500 students made it into the second round. The top prize went to a student team from the Institute of Communications Management at National Sun Yat-sen University, which used Google’s pay-per-click online keyword advertising tools to promote a public welfare organization.
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