REAL ESTATE
Home prices set to fall
Home prices across Taiwan are likely to trend lower next year, amid expectations that an interest rate hike cycle will boost borrowing costs following the end of the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, online property sales agency HouseFun (好房) said on Tuesday. The market widely expects that the Fed will start raising interest rates in the middle of next year, which could lead the nation’s central bank to follow suit, increasing rates for home mortgages. In addition, the rising number of unsold new residential units is expected to exert downward pressure on prices in the new year, HouseFun said. Buyers might see many unsold homes in New Taipei City, Greater Taoyuan and Hsinchu, it said. The result could be a price drop across most of the nation’s major cities. In Taipei, housing prices could fall 10 percent annually next year, HouseFun said.
ENERGY
‘Green’ facilities completed
State-run Taiwan Power Co (台電) has completed the construction of a photovoltaic energy generation system in Greater Taichung and installed eight new wind turbines in Greater Taoyuan, which together can power 8,304 additional households, the utility said yesterday. The state-run utility said the system in Taichung is the fourth and largest photovoltaic energy generation system in the nation. It can generate electricity for 2,290 households, while the eight wind turbines can provide electricity to 6,014 homes, the company said.
CHIPMAKERS
UMC 28nm plan approved
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the nation’s No. 2 contract chipmaker, yesterday said its board has approved the appropriation of NT$9.34 billion (US$293.8 million) to boost its capacity to produce 28-nanometer (nm) chips. The chipmaker plans to expand its 28nm chip capacity to 20,000 wafers a month early next year. The board yesterday also gave the go-ahead for the company to subscribe to new shares of wafer manufacturing subsidiary Wavetek Microelectronics Corp (聯穎光電) for a maximum of NT$540 million. It also approved a plan to sell a 6-inch wafer plant to Wavetek Microelectronics for NT$440 million.
PC MAKERS
Acer unveils EMEA shakeup
Acer Inc (宏碁) on Tuesday announced that Emmanuel Fromont, its corporate vice president and president of Pan America operations, will assume a new role as company president in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Fromont accrued years of management experience in these markets prior to moving to the US to take up his current position, the PC manufacturer said in a statement. Vice president of product marketing in Pan America Sumit Agnihotry will take Fromont’s vacant post as Pan America head. Acer EMEA president Luca Rossi is to leave the company after six years of service due to personal reasons, Acer said.
CURRENCIES
NT drops against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar fell against the US dollar yesterday, declining NT$0.05 to close at NT$31.815 as strong third-quarter economic growth in the US encouraged traders to buy into the greenback, dealers said. Although the central bank continued to intervene in the foreign exchange market to prop up the US unit, its efforts appeared weaker than in previous sessions and the gains posted by the greenback were capped by the close, dealers 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