Leading car vendor Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) saw its local market share rise to 34.1 percent last month, from 33.1 percent in April, thanks to strong sales of its Altis and Vios sedans.
Hotai, which distributes Toyota and Lexus models, sold 12,518 cars last month, up 10.4 percent from the previous month and 19.3 percent from a year ago, according to the data communication branch of Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信).
Altis sales increased to 4,068 units last month, topping all models sold that month, the data showed. The figure was up 15.1 percent from a month earlier and up 19.7 percent from a year ago.
Sales of the lower-priced Vios, with a remodeled version launched on April 1, rose 23.2 percent to 1,662 units last month from the previous month and surged 1.52 times from the previous year, data showed.
“We began bigger promotions last month to boost sales for this summer,” Hotai spokesman Fred Hsieh (謝富來) said by telephone, adding that the company aims to maintain a market share of more than 34 percent this quarter.
The company expects unit sales to reach about 12,000 this month, accounting for about one-third of the total market, Hsieh said.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which distributes Nissan and Infiniti cars, placed second again last month, selling 4,063 cars and taking a market share of 11.1 percent, data showed.
The figure was down 2.7 percent from a month ago, but up 21.9 percent from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田), the nation’s fifth-largest car distributor, saw sales jump 61.5 percent to 1,951 units from a month ago, but this was 3 percent lower than the previous year.
The company attributed the sequential increase to strong sales of its CR-V sports utility vehicle, which surged 36 percent to 1,022 units last month, and Civic sedans, sales of which rose more than twice to 529 units last month.
Because many car vendors began providing larger perks and promotions to increase sales, total car sales last month rose to 36,724 units, up 7.3 percent from a month earlier and 19.9 percent from a year ago, data showed.
From January through to last month, overall car sales rose 13.8 percent to 170,365 units from a year ago, data showed.
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],”