SEMICONDUCTORS
MediaTek sales up 9.57%
Handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said revenue reached a high of NT$19.1 billion (US$635.7 million) last month, up 9.57 percent from March, on replacement demand for smartphones in China and emerging markets. That was up 52 percent from a year earlier, boosted by the acquisition of MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體).
INVESTMENT
FSC approves UBS plan
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has approved applications by UBS Taiwan’s offshore banking unit to make foreign currency investments on behalf of foreign customers. The deregulation will help facilitate capital repatriation as other banks may follow suit, the commission said yesterday. The relaxation spares customers the need to enter trust deals for the services, it said.
BANKING
Mobile payments to be tried
Retail vendors in Taiwan will soon accept credit card payments by using a card reader attached to a tablet computer or smartphone, National Credit Card Center senior executive vice president Margaret Yin (殷介芳) said on Wednesday. “We will start with a pilot scheme and may expand the scale if it is widely accepted by the public,” Yin said. The project will go on six-month trial at Watami Japanese Casual Restaurant Taiwan (和民居食屋), DA.AI Technology Co (大愛感恩科技) and Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產物保險).
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last