TELECOMS
Leo Systems ready for loss
Leo Systems Inc (國眾電腦) said it will book about NT$102 million (US$3.21 million) in an asset loss reserve fund for this year, after First International Telecom Co (大眾電信) declared bankruptcy on Friday. The figure represents 5.83 percent of the company’s total assets, it said in a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Leo Systems will continue to monitor the development of the phone company’s bankruptcy, as First International Telecom still has NT$68.23 billion worth of WiMAX equipment in collateral. Leo Systems booked NT$96.4 million in asset loss reserve for the first three quarters of this year from First International Telecom, it said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Saturday. First International Telecom is the nation’s sole personal handy-phone system provider.
TRANSPORTATION
Spring Air recruits crew
The first batch of Taiwanese flight attendants recruited by Shanghai-based budget carrier Spring Airlines (春秋航空) will start serving on board flights next spring. According to Wang Suyu (汪束雨), general manager of Spring Airlines’ Taiwan branch, about 60 flight attendants were selected from among 900 Taiwanese applicants last month. They will receive three months of training in Shanghai before they take to the sky in April at the earliest. Taiwanese flight attendants will first serve on cross-strait and domestic routes in China. Spring Airlines said it hopes that the hospitality of Taiwanese crew members would help sharpen its competitive edge. Spring Airlines now operates 11 weekly flights between Taiwan and China — five on the Taoyuan-Shanghai route, three on the Kaohsiung-Shanghai route and three on the Taoyuan-Shijiazhuang route.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts