Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大) has considered the nation’s graying population with a near-field communication (NFC)-capable smart bracelet that could help senior citizens find their way home.
When lost, wearers can swipe the bracelets over any NFC-enabled smartphone to alert authorities to their location, pinpointed by GPS, the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier said yesterday.
“This marks the first NFC-based electronic tagging feature in a smart bracelet in Taiwan, and it could raise people’s willingness to help find senior citizens who get lost,” Taiwan Mobile president James Cheng (鄭光遠) told a press conference.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
The company plans to distribute 4,000 bracelets for free in Taipei and New Taipei City in partnership with the Foundation for the Welfare of the Elderly, and in Pingtung County with the Bjorgaas Social Welfare Foundation.
The bracelets could help the 200,000 Taiwanese seniors who have Alzheimer’s disease, Cheng said.
The Foundation for the Welfare of the Elderly has said that about 58 percent of people with Alzheimer’s who become lost are found within a short period of time, but the technology in the bracelet could increase that number to 100 percent, Cheng said.
Cheng also mentioned Taiwan Mobile’s plans to sell fourth-generation (4G) smartphones that support the nation’s unique 700 MHz frequency, saying the company would launch 10 smartphone models capable of using the frequency in the third quarter of this year, when its 4G network is due to be inaugurated.
The phones include a Taiwan Mobile-branded 4G phone made by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), the main manufacturer of Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads.
Taiwan Mobile will increase its 700 MHz 4G phone selections to as many as 40 models by the end of the year, thanks to 4G LTE chips launched by suppliers such as Qualcomm Inc, Cheng said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS