PANELS
Demand for large size grows
The LCD market has seen growing demand for large-sized products, with WitsView predicting on Saturday that the proportion of panels sized 20 inches and above will reach a record high this year. In the final quarter of last year, shipments of large products of 20 inches and above already reached 60 percent of the total LCD shipments worldwide, the Taiwanese research firm said in a research note. And the ratio has grown to 63 percent and 65 percent during the first and second quarters of this year, it added. “This was mainly due to the increasing demands for 21.5 and 23.6-inch monitors, and the entry of 23.8-inch products,” WitsView research manager Anita Wang (王靖怡) said. The global proportion of monitor panels sized 20-inch and above will continue rising and will likely reach between 68 and 70 percent by the end of the year, the firm predicted.
SMARTPHONES
Chinese shipments to rise
Shipments of smartphones from China are expected to continue rising this year, after increasing 62.4 percent to 314 million units last year, Digitimes Research said. Driven by the promotion of the 4G Long-Term Evolution network, China’s smartphone shipments are expected to reach 400 million units this year, up 27.38 percent from a year earlier, Digitimes Research said in a research note. More than 30 percent of the 400 million units will be shipped overseas, mainly to emerging markets, such as Southeast Asian countries and India, the research firm predicted. Since last month, makers and telecom operators in China have provided more subsidies on 4G smartphones, to boost the number of new 4G network users in the country, which only totalled 8 million people, far lower than expected, the research note 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
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
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
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