The local integrated circuit (IC) sector moved higher in Taipei trading yesterday on expectations that the upcoming annual SEMICON Taiwan exhibition will come up with positive leads to help IC stocks spark more buying interest, dealers said.
The current buying also resulted from the consolidation mode in which the local semiconductor sector had moved in recent sessions and their attractive valuations lured many bargain hunters to enter the trading floor in the current session, the dealers said.
Large cap semiconductor stocks, such as contract chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and IC packaging and testing services provider Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品), posted significant gains, giving a strong boost to the broader market, they added.
TSMC shares — the most heavily weighted stock in the local market — rallied 3.36 percent to NT$128.5, while SPIL shares soared 3.78 percent to NT$45.25.
IC designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares surged 3.1 percent to NT$515.
The semiconductor subindex increased 2.81 percent, while the weighted index on the TAIEX gained 0.81 percent.
“The SEMICON Taiwan trade show served as a catalyst to today’s gains among these IC stocks. Many investors simply seized the exhibition as a reason to pick up semiconductor stocks by taking advantage of their recent consolidation,” Grand Fortune Securities (福邦證券) analyst Chen Wei-tai said.
SEMICON Taiwan is scheduled to open tomorrow and run through Friday. The 19th annual SEMICON exhibition is expected to become the largest ever, with almost 1,400 booths demonstrating advanced IC technology.
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
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