SEMICONDUCTORS
FocalTech to merge Orise
FocalTech Corp (敦泰電子), a major supplier of controller chips for smartphone touch panels in China, yesterday said the company’s board had approved a proposal to merge with local rival Orise Technology Co Ltd (旭曜科技) via a share swap. The merger would create the world’s biggest touch panel controller and driver IC supplier, FocalTech said in a statement. Each FocalTech share will be exchanged for 4.8 Orise shares, it said. FocalTech will pay NT$62.4 per Orise share, a premium of about 11 percent compared with Orise’s closing price of NT$56 on Friday last week. The firm expects to complete the transaction on Jan. 2 next year, with FocalTech being delisted from the local stock market and Orise renamed FocalTech.
DISPLAY
Amtran to cut dividends
Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒科技), which makes flat-panel TVs for Vizio Inc and other TV brands, yesterday said its board had approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$2.2 per share this year — lower than last year’s NT$2.5 because of a profit decline. Despite the drop, it still represented a dividend yield of 11.2 percent based on the stock’s closing price of NT$19.65 yesterday. Amtran posted a net profit of NT$1.14 billion (US$37.6 million), or NT$1.4 per share, last year, down 40 percent from NT$1.92 billion, or NT$2.19 per share, in 2012. Revenue halved to NT$29.5 billion last year from NT$58.8 billion a year.
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