Taiwanese providers of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules may stand to benefit as the Australian government launches an antidumping investigation into finished and semi-finished Chinese PV imports.
Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday that the Australian antidumping commission will be investigating PV modules imported from China between July 1, 2012, and Dec. 31 last year.
If Chinese firms were found to be dumping, the commission will report the case to Australia’s Congress on Oct. 16, it added.
Chinese modules currently account for 70 percent of the total demand in Australia.
That means that Australian companies could need to start to look for alternative solutions, likely from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, TrendForce said.
Chinese manufacturers could also outsource to Taiwanese companies in a bid to avoid the investigation, benefiting Taiwanese module makers, the report said.
While it will take negotiations and compromises to determine the final results of Australia’s investigation, antidumping and antisubsidy inspections targeting Chinese firms could become a common occurrence in the future, TrendForce said.
Taiwanese makers could play more important roles in the future, but it is critical for companies to think about how to avoid meeting the same fate as their Chinese counterparts while expanding market opportunities, the researcher said.
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