SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC shares rise
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) rose yesterday morning after the world’s largest contract chipmaker gave an upbeat assessment of its sales growth this year at an investors’ conference held one day earlier, dealers said. However, the gains were capped as investors locked in recent gains in the company’s shares, with the stock moving closer to the nearest technical resistance at about NT$110.00, they said. The stock price of TSMC rose 0.98 percent to end at NT$103 yesterday. At the investors’ conference on Thursday afternoon, TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) said he expected the world semiconductor foundry business to see sales rise by 10 percent this year, but predicted his company would surpass the industry trend to post double-digit sales growth.
TELEVISIONS
Amtran sells 3 million TVs
Amtran Technology Co Ltd’s (瑞軒), which makes televisions for US TV brand Vizio and Japan’s Funai, yesterday said it has shipped 3 million flat-panel TVs last year with half of the shipment going to the North American market. Amtran expected TV shipments to retain the same level this year, while the company hopes to boost profit by shipping more big TVs and more super-high-definition TVs this year. Last year, Amtran made NT$29.5 billion (US$980 million) in revenue, down 21.17 percent from NT$37.41 billion in 2012.
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