King Yuan builds new plant
King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電子), an integrated circuit testing service provider, yesterday broke ground for its second plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Industrial Park (銅鑼科學園區), after its first plant in the park began mass production earlier this year.
King Yuan chairman Lee Chin-kung (李金恭) said the first plant brought about 600 jobs to the area and the new one is expected to add several hundred more.
The second plant, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year, is to provide wafer-testing services for microelectromechanical systems sensor and system-on-a-chip processor, the company said
UMC revenue rises 11.5%
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the nation’s second-largest contract chipmaker, yesterday reported its revenue last month had risen from a year earlier, but fallen from the previous month, as the semiconductor industry was entering a seasonal adjustment.
Consolidated revenue last month increased 11.5 percent year-on-year to NT$11.54 billion (US$368.6 million), but dropped 14.52 percent from October, UMC said in a statement.
The monthly drop last month came after UMC reported a record consolidated revenue of NT$13.5 billion in October.
In the first 11 months of the year, cumulative revenue totaled NT$127.81 billion on a consolidated basis, up 12.2 percent from the same period last year, the Hsinchu-based company said.
Compal revenue rises 24.97%
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world’s second-largest notebook contract maker by revenue, yesterday posted consolidated revenue of NT$82.45 billion last month, up 24.97 percent from a year earlier and 1.61 percent higher than the previous month, as the company’s core notebook business grew steadily in line with industry trends.
Compal shipped 4.1 million laptops last month, compared with 3.6 million in October, it said.
Total revenue for the first 11 months was NT$762.88 billion, up 21.47 percent from the same period of last year, it said.
Hiring outlook remains strong
The nation’s hiring outlook for the first quarter of next year remains strong, with the net employment outlook ranking the second-highest worldwide, according to a survey released by ManpowerGroup yesterday.
In the survey, ManpowerGroup said that Taiwan’s net employment outlook for the January-March period after seasonal adjustments stood at 43 percent, trailing only India’s 45 percent.
The international human resource company said that after interviewing 1,118 employers in Taiwan, 40 percent of them have plans to expand their workforce, while 3 percent want to downsize in the first quarter and 53 percent said they will leave their workforce unchanged in the coming quarter.
Formosa gains on share sale
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC, 台塑石化), the nation’s only private oil refiner, yesterday said it made an investment gain of NT$136.9 million by selling 4.22 million shares in DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) at NT$71.65 per share between Friday last week and yesterday.
On Dec. 2, Formosa Petrochemical said it planned to sell 6.53 million Nanya Technology shares to strengthen its working capital. The announcement came as Formosa Petrochemical faces falling revenue affected by declining global crude oil prices, while Nanya Technology’s business is on a steady recovery this year.
Accton posts NT$2.09 revenue
Accton Technology Corp (智邦科技), a local maker of computer network equipment such as routers, yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$2.09 billion for last month, up 4.13 percent year-on-year and 21.72 percent month-on-month.
By product, network switches accounted for 62.18 percent of the company’s sales last month, carrier access solutions made up 24 percent, wireless local area networks 4.89 percent, broadband and gateway devices 3.39 percent and others 5.54 percent.
For the first 11 months of the year, cumulative revenue increased 0.64 percent to NT$20.36 billion, the firm said.
CTBC overseas offices approved
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has approved CTBC Bank Co (中國信託銀行) to file an application to Australia and Malaysia respectively, in a bid to set up representative offices in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur. The lender has 100 overseas operations.
CTBC said the move may help it collect local business information via the office, and further seek opportunities to expand its banking business in the two nations.
Five Taiwanese banks have branches in Australia, while only two — state-run Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商業銀行) and Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) — have branches in Malaysia, FSC data showed.
Xiaomi launches air purifier
Xiaomi Corp (小米) unveiled a home air purifier that sends pollution readings to users as the Chinese smartphone maker seeks to address concerns about air quality while widening its line of consumer electronics.
The purifier can be controlled by a smartphone and it alerts users when its filter needs to be replaced, Xiaomi founder and chief executive officer Lei Jun (雷軍) said yesterday at a press conference at the company’s Beijing headquarters.
It will sell for 899 yuan (US$145) and deliver as much as 406m3 of clean air an hour, he 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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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