Car sales in the local market last month rose more than 13 percent from a month earlier, with market analysts attributing the growth to solid demand ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
According to statistics compiled by the transportation authorities, dealerships sold 44,301 cars in Taiwan last month, up 13.6 percent from December last year and up 4 percent from the previous year.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the local sales agent for Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp, remained the top seller in the nation after selling 13,399 units last month to take a 30.2 percent share of the local car market.
Hotai Motor’s sales figures rose 2 percent from December, while the figures fell 6.8 percent from the same period last year due to a supply shortage that resulted from strong demand in the fourth quarter of last year.
Market analysts said the supply shortage at Hotai Motor is expected to delay deliveries in the rest of the first quarter, so that Toyota could see its sales remain strong in February and March.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產) came in second, selling 5,921 cars last month, up 35.9 percent from a month earlier and up 18.2 percent from a year earlier, to take a 13.4 percent share of the local auto market.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車) was in third position with a 10.7 percent share, selling 4,719 cars last month, a rise of 39.7 percent from December, but a drop of 11.7 percent from a year earlier.
The nation’s fourth-largest vendor, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷), sold 3,101 units to take a 7 percent market share. It was the first time Luxgen had ranked among the top-four sellers in Taiwan.
Hotai Motor president Su Chwen Shing (蘇純興) said the company is expected to generate more than NT$150 billion (US$4.95 billion) in sales this year, up from NT$146.6 billion recorded last year. Last year’s sales were the highest in the company’s history.
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