ASE, Bosch to team up
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光), the world’s biggest chip packager and tester, said yesterday it would team up with Bosch Sensortec GmbH of Germany to jointly develop a leading edge sensor device.
ASE said this leading edge sensor device features digital interfaces in an advanced wafer level chip scale package, as the industry is geared towards highly integrated low-power consumer electronics applications.
Sensor technologies are playing an integral role in emerging applications within the Internet of Things, and the high demand for innovative applications have increasingly pushed semiconductor firms towards smaller and thinner form factors that demands advanced wafer-level packaging technologies provided by ASE, the company said.
Money-supply growth slows
Taiwan’s M2 money supply, the broadest measure of money flowing through the banking system, rose 5.63 percent last month from a year earlier, decelerating from June’s 5.74 percent rise, the central bank said on Monday, due to decreased net foreign capital inflows.
The M1B monetary aggregate rose 7.65 percent year-on-year last month from June’s 7.46 percent increase, mainly owing to increased demand deposits resulting from brisk trading in the stock market, the bank said in a statement.
M1B refers to net currency, checking accounts and passbook deposits of companies and individuals, plus the passbook savings deposits of individuals. M2 refers to M1B plus time deposits, negotiable certificates of deposit, foreign currency deposits and mutual funds.
For the first seven months of this year, the average annual growth rates of M1B and M2 were 8.53 percent and 5.85 percent respectively, the bank said.
AmFraser deal goes through
China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) has acquired Singapore’s AmFraser Securities Pte Ltd through its brokerage unit for about S$38 million (US$30.4 million), the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
China Development said through the deal, its wholly owned subsidiary KGI Securities Co (凱基證券) would have access to AmFraser’s existing clients and trading platforms in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Ting Hsin inks CNS buy pact
Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) on Monday signed an agreement to buy a 60 percent stake in local cable TV operator China Network Systems Co (CNS, 中嘉網路) from South Korean private equity fund MBK Partners Ltd, Ting Hsin spokesman Ted Chia (賈先德) said at a press conference.
Due to confidentiality terms of the agreement, Chia declined to reveal any monetary numbers or the ownership structure of CNS. He said the two companies would prepare legal documents for regulatory reviews next month by the National Communications Commission and the Investment Commission.
No power price hikes planned
The government has no electricity rate hike plans in the near future even as the supply of electricity tightens as old plants are decommissioned, Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said on Monday.
“Electricity rates won’t be increased any time this year or next year,” Duh said in an interview with CNA.
However, he said that Taiwan’s electricity supply would only turn tighter in the near future because old power plants would be decommissioned soon and there is no guarantee that new plants will come on line in time to pick up the slack.
The situation will only get worse if the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant and the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant are fully decommissioned on schedule (in 2019 and 2023 respectively), Duh said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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