Taiwanese printed circuit board (PCB) and casing makers may encounter intensifying competition next year, as they face undercutting by Chinese rivals amid the rise in popularity of low-cost PCs and mobile devices, local market research house Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 資策會) said yesterday.
“PC makers have to roll out more lower-priced laptops and source lower-priced components to counter the effects of smartphones and tablets,” MIC senior manager Charles Chou (周士雄) told a forum.
Citing a survey by China’s largest shopping Web site, Taobao.com (淘寶), Chou said the average selling price of a tablet is expected to drop to US$175 next year from an estimated US$198 this year.
Following this trend, China’s top PCB makers, including Founder Technology Group Corp (方正), China Circuit Technology (Shantou) Corp (汕頭超聲) and Shennan Circuit Co Ltd (深南電路), have increased their global market share to between 40 percent and 50 percent as of last month, Chou said.
Taiwan’s PCB makers such as Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興) and Zhen Ding Technology Holding Ltd (臻鼎) currently supply up to 30 percent of the world’s PCB products, but Chinese PCB makers are nibbling away at their market shares by offering lower-priced products, Chou said.
Adopting low pricing strategies, China’s leading casing makers, including BYD Co (比亞迪), Tongda Group Holdings Ltd (通達集團) and Jiarui International Group Ltd (嘉瑞國際), increased their global market shares to about 30 percent as of last month, according to MIC.
The problems faced by Taiwanese casing makers such as Catcher Technology Co (可成科技) and Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準) would be smaller because of their technological advantages, Chou said. Catcher and Foxconn Technology make metal casings, while most Chinese companies make plastic casings, Chou said. The shrinking demand for PCs would still cause them problems, he added.
The worldwide shipment of laptops would continue contracting by 3 percent to 4 percent to about 167 million units next year after a 10-percent decline to 173 million units this year, MIC forecast.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the