Taiwan status unchanged: MSCI
Taiwan remains an emerging market on the MSCI index after its annual market classification review, the global index provider said on Tuesday.
In a statement released on its Web site, MSCI said that both Taiwan and South Korea had been removed from the review list of country indices for potential upgrade into developed markets.
“This decision is motivated by the absence of any significant improvements in key areas negatively affecting accessibility in the [South] Korean and Taiwanese equity markets for the past few years,” MSCI said in the statement.
HTC’s market down to 2%
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) held only a 2 percent share of the global smartphone market last year, ranking it 11th in a market dominated by Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc.
HTC shipped 20.35 million smartphones last year, a decline of 38 percent from the 32.86 million units it shipped in 2012, according to its annual report to shareholders published late on Tuesday.
HTC said Samsung continued to lead the global smartphone market last year with a 31.6 percent share, followed by Apple with 15.5 percent. The next three spots were taken by Huawei Technologies Co (華為), LG Electronics Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), with market shares of between 4.5 percent and 5 percent, the report said.
New products lift Acer sales
PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁) on Tuesday reported a 32.69 percent sequential increase in consolidated sales last month, thanks to the introduction of new tablets and smartphones.
On an annual basis, however, last month’s consolidated sales of NT$25.55 billion were down 2.91 percent, Acer said in a statement.
Cumulative sales in the first five months of the year totaled NT$121.53 billion, down 15.54 percent from a year earlier.
Quanta sales rise 14.8%
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s largest contract notebook computer maker, on Tuesday said that consolidated sales last month reached NT$70.12 billion, down 3.4 percent from a month earlier, but up 14.8 percent from a year earlier.
Quanta’s notebook shipments totaled 3.9 million units for the month, up 18 percent from April. Although shipments increased, sales last month trended lower because it shipped more low-priced models.
Consolidated sales in the first five months of the year rose 12.1 percent from a year earlier to NT$358.54 billion, the company said.
Cathay Bank, SPD sign deal
Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the banking arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金), yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding with China’s SPD Bank (上海浦東發展銀行) to cooperate in trade financing, yuan clearing and settlement, cash management and other businesses.
SPD Bank is the eighth Chinese lender to sign an MOU with the Taiwanese bank, which is seeking to expand its presence in China.
Established in 1993, SPD Bank has 915 branches and outlets across China.
Chunghwa gains Firefox support
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) has signed a cooperation agreement with Mozilla Corp, developer of the Firefox Web browser, to gain support for the Firefox operating system for its mobile phones. The nation’s top telecoms operator yesterday said that through the Web-based Firefox OS, it would be able to bring more value-added and customized mobile services and provide better user experience.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the