Ting Hsin to not sell 101 stake
Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), which is embroiled in a series of food scandals, yesterday said it would not sell its stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓公司), because its stake in TFCC is “irrelevant” to the food scandals.
The group said in a statement that its stake in TFCC, which operates Taipei 101, is legal and that it has faith in the nation’s rule of law.
Ting Hsin owns a 37.17 percent stake in TFCC, making it the second-largest shareholder in Taipei 101, only behind the 44.35 percent controlled by the government.
Tourists’ NT$ limit raised
The central bank yesterday raised the limit on the amount of New Taiwan dollars individual tourists may carry upon leaving or entering Taiwan to NT$100,000, from NT$60,000.
The easing, which is to take effect on Jan. 1 next year, aims to make tourism more convenient and to boost the nation’s tourism industry, the central bank said in a statement.
Credit card numbers edge up
The nation has 3.71 million credit cards in circulation, with the number of effective cards standing at 23.82 million last month, slightly up from one month earlier, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday.
Total card spending amounted to NT$178.9 billion last month, an increase of NT$17.2 billion from August, the commission said.
Revolving credit dropped by NT$800 million to NT$113.6 billion last month from one month earlier, the commission said.
4G subscribers surge
The nation has seen an exponential increase in the number of 4G users in recent months, and the number of users is set to reach 3 million by the end of the year, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) president Shih Mu-piao (石木標) said yesterday.
The speed and depth of the penetration rate may be seen as the highest in the world, surpassing the take-up rate of South Korea when that country first made 4G services available, Shih said at a forum.
As of Oct. 15, there were 1.65 million 4G subscribers in Taiwan, Shih said, referencing National Communications Commission statistics.
The number is expected to hit 3 million with the 4G penetration rate reaching 13 percent by the end of this year, he added.
CAL carries more freight
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, said on Wednesday that it moved up one place in the rankings to become the sixth-largest carrier of international air cargo by volume last year, citing the latest report from the International Air Transport Association.
According to the association, CAL carried about 1.2 million tonnes of goods last year, up from 1.1 million tonnes in 2012.
CLA’s cargo shipments in the first eight months of this year increased 13 percent year-on-year amid an improved global economy, and the launch of new technology products is expected to help extend the peak season of the air freight market well into the fourth quarter, CAL said.
Parade predicts fall in sales
Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞), a leading video display and interface IC supplier for Apple Inc, is expecting sales of between US$52.5 million and US$57.5 million this quarter, a decline from the US$58.98 million recorded in the last quarter.
The sales guidance estimates a fall of between 2.5 percent and 11 percent from last quarter, the company said yesterday, after reporting net income rose 37.86 percent to US$12.72 million from the previous quarter.
The fabless IC designer said that gross margin would remain at between 40 and 43 percent this quarter, compared with the 41.67 percent recorded last quarter.
Parade is the sole supplier of embedded DisplayPort solutions for the iPad Air and the Retina iPad mini.
Mobile online purchases at 54%
More than half of the nation’s consumers made their most recent online purchase using a mobile phone, the highest proportion in the world, according to a survey released by Google Inc on Wednesday.
The survey, conducted jointly with market research group TNS, found that the 54 percent mobile phone shopping rate was higher than the 45 percent rate seen in the UK and the 43 percent rate seen in China.
It was higher than the rates in South Korea, with 38 percent, Russia with 32 percent, Italy with 31 percent and the US with 26 percent.
The survey received valid responses from 3,100 Taiwanese aged over 16 during the first quarter of this year.
Twitter to allow IBM access
Twitter on Wednesday announced a partnership to allow IBM Corp to access the public stream of tweets to provide businesses with insights for making decisions.
The alliance would put IBM computing expertise, including its Watson artificial intelligence technology, to work extracting insights from Twitter to “enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data,” IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty said in a release.
IBM plans to access Twitter data to glean answers to questions such as what customers like or dislike about products, or why a company is growing quickly in one country and not another.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last