Total car sales nationwide rose 3.4 percent to 378,456 units last year from the 365,871 recorded a year ago, the latest industrial data showed.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which sells Toyota and Lexus models, continue to lead the market by selling 127,220 cars, accounting for 33.6 percent of the market share last year. The company’s sales rose 2.8 percent from a year ago.
Hotai Motor sold 37,038 units of Corona Altis sedan last year, making it the best-selling car for the past 13 years.
The firm also sold 17,477 units of Wish minivan and 15,785 imported RAV4 SUVs, the second and fourth-bestselling cars respectively.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which distributes Nissan and Infiniti cars, replaced China Motor Corp (中華汽車) as the second-largest car distributor, selling 44,010 cars, which accounted for 11.6 percent of the market, the data showed.
Yulon Nissan’s sales increased 7.6 percent from 2012.
The company distributed 17,191 units of the Big TIIDA family car, the nation’s third-bestselling car, and 14,291 units of Livina, a compact, multipurpose vehicle and the sixth-bestselling car of the year.
China Motor, the local manufacturer of Mitsubishi cars, sold 42,060 cars, taking a 11.1 percent of the market share.
The figure was down 13.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the industry data.
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