MANUFACTURING
Ichia May revenue down 1%
Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技), which supplies handset keypads to BlackBerry Ltd, yesterday said revenue dropped 1 percent to NT$1.042 billion (US$34.6 million) last month from NT$1.041 billion in April, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. On an annual basis, the figure represented an increase of 19.45 percent from NT$872 million. In the first five months of this year, Ichia made NT$4.88 billion in revenue, up about 38 percent from NT$3.54 billion in the same period of last year. Ichia general manager Larry Sun (孫永祥) told an investors’ conference in April that the company’s revenue and net profit may hit another record high this year, due to corporate restructuring and sales of new products.
TRADE
‘Flat panel queen’ to visit
China’s “flat panel queen,” Bai Weimin (白為民), is expected to purchase billions of dollars worth of flat panels when she visits this week for Taipei’s annual Computex show, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) said on Saturday. This year, China will buy mainly 4K2K flat panels, accounting for at least 20 percent of its total purchases, TAITRA said. TAITRA, the nation’s main trade promotion body, has invited Bai to Computex Taipei every year since 2009. Bai, deputy director of the China Video Industry Association, has pledged to buy at least US$4.5 billion worth of products, including 27 million flat panels during her visit this year, up 15 percent from last year, TAITRA chairman Wang Chih-kang (王志剛) said in April. Bai is also scheduled to attend a cross-strait cooperation conference on the display industry on Friday, TAITRA said.
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
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
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