TRADE
GTSM to work with LSE
GRETAI Securities Market (GTSM) chairman Wu Sou-shan (吳壽山) on Tuesday said the exchange will forge business ties with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in a bid to provide better services to investors in Europe and Asia. The GTSM, which is scheduled to hold a meeting with the LSE next month to map out the details of the bilateral cooperation, is interested in working with the British financial sector to push for a cross-border yuan offshore trading center and yuan-denominated bond markets in Taiwan and the UK.
TECHNOLOGY
Acer seeks cross-strait growth
Acer Inc (宏碁) chairman Stan Shih (施振榮) announced plans yesterday to raise between US$200 million and US$500 million through investors in China and Taiwan to develop cross-strait creative industries. Shih said the fundraising is expected to be completed this year and will mainly target Chinese investors in an effort to tap into China’s huge creative industry market.
TECHNOLOGY
Surface Pro 3 to launch
The newest iteration of Microsoft Corp’s first foray into computer hardware, the Surface Pro 3, is to land on store shelves in Taiwan by the end of August. The US company unveiled the 12-inch successor to its flagship Windows tablet computer on Tuesday in New York, promising to roll it out to 28 countries before September.
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”