Lextar sales hit record in July
Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子), which makes LED chips and lighting items, yesterday said its consolidated sales hit a record NT$1.41 billion (US$46.9 million) last month, up 4.4 percent from June and 7.2 percent from a year ago.
The LED manufacturing arm of AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), which also supplies LED backlight modules and provides packaging services to clients, said the increase was due to continued growth in backlight and lighting orders from major clients.
Accumulated revenue in the first seven months of the year was NT$8.43 billion (US$281 million), rising 4.92 percent from a year earlier, company data showed.
Siliconware revenue slows
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the nation’s second-biggest chip packager and tester, yesterday said revenue for last month declined from a record level in June.
Revenue last month dropped 3.83 percent month-on-month, but rose 20.52 percent year-on-year to NT$7.39 billion. Cumulative revenue in the first seven months of the year rose 26.17 percent to NT$47.38 billion, Siliconware said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Realtek sales rise on demand
Networking chipmaker Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱半導體) yesterday reported that sales edged up 0.6 percent to NT$2.66 billion from June.
Compared with a year earlier, the figure grew 16.19 percent, thanks to strong demand for products like Wi-Fi applications in tablets and handsets, as well as audio codecs in networking and multimedia applications.
Cumulative sales from January through last month rose 12.95 percent year-on-year to NT$18.06 billion, the company said.
Yageo revenue rises 2.5%
Yageo Corp (國巨), the nation’s largest passive components maker, yesterday said consolidated sales rose to NT$2.34 billion last month, up 2.5 percent from June and 10.8 percent from a year ago.
The company’s sales in the first seven months of the year increased to NT$47.38 billion, 26.17 percent higher than NT$37.55 billion during the same period a year ago, according to the company’s stock exchange filing.
Forex reserves up last month
Foreign exchange reserves totaled US$423.66 billion as of the end of last month, up US$207 million from a month earlier, the central bank said yesterday.
The bank said that the reserves showed only a mild increase because returns from the management of reserve assets were offset by the depreciation of the euro and other reserve currencies against the US dollar.
The data also showed that Taiwan continued to hold the world’s fourth-largest foreign exchange reserves, just behind China, Japan and Russia.
Semiconductor output up
Semiconductor output hit a record high in the first five months of the year on the back of a global economic recovery and strong demand for mobile devices, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Production value from January to May reached NT$600.3 billion, up 14.2 percent from last year, the ministry said. Sixty-five percent of the output was from IC makers, whose production rose 14.7 percent year-on-year to NT$391.6 billion during the period.
600,000 visit computer show
The Taipei Computer Applications Show attracted a record number of visitors, organizers said. The five-day event, which ended on Monday, drew more than 600,000 visitors, and sales were up 33.27 percent compared with last year, the Taipei Computer Association said in a statement.
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],”