Foreign exchange reserves drop
The nation’s foreign exchange reserves amounted to US$423.07 billion as of the end of last month, a decrease of US$595 million from a month earlier and ending eight consecutive months of increases, the central bank said yesterday. However, Taiwan remains the world’s fourth-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, behind China, Japan and Russia.
The main factor behind the decrease came from the depreciation of the euro and other main currencies versus the US dollar last month from July, making declines in foreign exchange reserves greater than returns from management, the bank said in a statement.
The market value of securities, bonds and New Taiwan dollar deposits held by foreign portfolio investors reached US$302.8 billion at the end of last month, accounting for 72 percent of foreign exchange reserves and hitting a new record-high level, the statement said.
CAL offers new flights to NY
China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) yesterday said that it will offer three non-stop flights to New York per week from Oct. 2, every Monday, Thursday and Saturday, arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport the same day. The return flight will have a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, and will arrive at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport two days later, CAL said.
Winbond annual revenue grows
Memorychip maker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電) yesterday said revenue for last month fell 2.19 percent to NT$3.27 billion (US$109 million) from NT$3.34 billion in July. On an annual basis, revenue grew 16.42 percent from NT$2.8 billion.
In the first eight months, cumulative revenue rose 13.15 percent to NT$25.1 billion, compared with NT$22.18 billion in the same period last year, the company said.
Hermes revenue increases
Electron beam wafer inspection equipment maker Hermes Microvision Inc (HMI, 漢微科) yesterday said that its revenue last month surged by 111.4 percent from July and 72.15 percent from a year earlier to NT$688.4 million.
In the first eight months of the year, the company reported NT$4.06 billion in cumulative sales, up 20.87 percent from the same period last year, in line with market expectation.
The company enjoys a more than 85 percent share of the global e-beam inspection systems market.
4G smartphone prices cut
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大), the nation’s second-largest telecommunications operator, yesterday announced price cuts for 4G smartphones amid intensifying competition.
The company said new 4G subscribers would get a Samsung S5 for just NT$400 by signing a 30-month service contract and pay a minimal monthly fee of NT$1,399.
In July, Taiwan Mobile said 4G subscribers had to pay NT$4,900 for a Samsung S5 along with a 24-month service contract for a minimum fee of NT$1,599 per month.
Consumers can also receive HTC Corp’s (宏達電) popular One M8 smartphone for free, if they agree to a 30-month service contract with Taiwan Mobile with a NT$1,399 payment per month.
PCB industry increases output
The Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center on Thursday revised its production value forecast for Taiwan’s printed circuit board (PCB) industry, expecting total output this year to rise 5.13 percent annually to NT$549 billion, compared with an earlier forecast of 2.99 percent growth.
The upward revision came as the center said the industry’s production value could hit a three-year high of NT$147.5 billion in the third quarter on the launch of new smartphones, said Jiang Bor-feng (江柏風), a senior analyst at the center, which is run by the state-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute.
In the second quarter, output increased 9.4 percent quarterly and 6 percent annually to NT$136.2 billion, Jiang said.
CPC eyes tariffs reduction
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said on Thursday that it hopes to see a reduction in tariffs on petrochemical exports to China, which would give Taiwanese businesses in the sector a competitive edge in that market.
With Taiwan and China set to resume negotiations from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12 on a trade-in-goods agreement, CPC is expecting the tariff cut to be on the table, CPC chairman Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) said, adding that China currently imposes about a 6.54 percent tariff in Taiwan-made petrochemical products.
Taiwan leads LED chip market
Taiwan’s LED industry has great development potential, with a total output value of NT$219.5 billion last year, Liu Chun-ting (劉軍廷), director-general of the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories, said on Thursday at a cross-strait industry conference in Changhua County.
Liu also said Taiwan is the largest LED chip manufacturer in the world, with consolidated revenue of US$1.58 billion last year.
Nvidia files patent complaint
Nvidia Corp, a maker of graphics chips and processors, filed a patent-infringement complaint against Qualcomm Inc and Samsung Electronics Co after two years of failed licensing talks.
Nvidia is seeking to block imports of the latest Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets that use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon graphics processing units or Samsung’s Exynos processors.
In the complaint, filed with the US International Trade Commission on Thursday, Nvidia said it is seeking to stop Qualcomm and Samsung “from their wholesale infringement of Nvidia’s important visual computing technologies.”
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