Listed firms performing well
The consolidated sales of all the nation’s listed companies totaled NT$2.349 trillion (US$78.25 billion) last month, up 10.37 percent year-on-year, statistics released by the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday show.
Among the 809 listed enterprises, 542 of them posted an increase in sales, compared with 267 that recorded a decline.
In the first six months of this year, consolidated sales of all listed companies amounted to NT$13.26 trillion, up 5.37 percent year-on-year.
Of the 809 listed firms nationwide, 524 saw revenues grow, while 285 saw earnings decline, statistics showed.
Major industries that showed growth include the semiconductor, glass and pottery industries, as well as the automobile sector.
By contrast construction and construction material, optoelectronics and telecommunication and communications sectors suffered a decline.
Fubon wins Taipei project
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) on Friday won a superficies right project from Taipei City Government for NT$1.401 billion, the company said in a statement.
The project is located in Beitou District (北投), near the New Beitou MRT Station, Fubon Life said.
It consist of five small plots of land with a total area of 1,041.43 ping (3,442.73m2), the company added.
Fubon Life said the 70-year leasehold project could generate stable rental yields, as it plans to build a hotel with hot spring facilities that may create rental yields of 4 percent a year.
4G to fuel smartphone boom
Worldwide smartphone shipments are to continue growing this year, spurred on by the growing promotion of 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) forecast on Friday.
A total of 1.20 billion smartphones are expected to be shipped this year, up 29 percent from a year ago, with China’s growing 4G Time Division LTE in particular generating growth momentum in smartphone shipments and smartphone specifications upgrades, TrendForce said.
Other factors expected to boost shipments are the release of Apple Inc’s new iPhone later this year, economic recovery across the globe, and increased demand for entry-level and mid-range smartphones, the researcher said.
Macronix sues Spansion
Memorychip producer Macronix International Co (旺宏電子) said on Wednesday that it has filed a new patent infringement complaint in Germany against Spansion Inc, the firm’s subsidiaries and some of its customers.
Hsinchu-based Macronix said that it petitioned a German court for monetary compensation from Spansion and an injunction against certain products that have infringed on its patents.
The patents in question cover aspects of non-volatile memory devices, including flash memory, Macronix said in a statement.
Phones to aid memory sector
The global memory storage industry could get a boost from solid demand for smartphones in the second half of the year, when the supply of DRAM chips is expected to remain tight, DRAMeXchange has forecast.
The research house predicted that the average contract price of DDR3 4GB DRAMs will top the US$33 quoted for this month and the next, up from the US$30.5 quoted for the second half of last month.
Strong demand will likely keep DRAM prices high in the third quarter, DRAMeXchange said.
Ghost Month spurs car sales
Domestic car sales rose more than 40 percent in the first 10 days of this month, compared with the same period a month earlier, as car dealers’ sought to spark buying interest with the launch new models, statistics showed on Saturday.
Analysts said consumers are also rushing to purchase big-ticket items like cars that, due to superstitions, are generally avoided during Ghost Month, which this year falls from July 27 to Aug. 24.
In the first 10 days of the month vehicle sales totaled 8,135 units, up 41 percent year-on-year, according to the statistics.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the local sales agent for Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp, remained the nation’s biggest car supplier during the 10-day period with sales of 2,795 units, up 63.6 percent month-on-month and 10.6 percent annually.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained