ELECTRONICS
Wistron opens facility
Taiwan’s Wistron Corp (緯創), one of the world’s largest contract electronics makers, opened a research center in Greater Kaohsiung on Tuesday to increase its presence in software product development. Wistron chairman Simon Lin (林憲明) said at an inauguration ceremony that recruitment for the new research center has surpassed the company’s expectations over the past month. With the aim of attracting local engineers, Wistron is planning to expand its Taiwan research bases from Taipei and Kaohsiung to more areas across the nation, Lin was quoted as saying in a company statement. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) promised at the ceremony that the city government would help Wistron achieve its hiring target of 200 people as soon as possible, and she expressed hope that the company would create 2,000 jobs in Kaohsiung through more investment in the long term. Wistron employs more than 4,000 software engineers worldwide to develop applications for smart schools, enterprise solutions, mobile solutions and platform services, according to the company.
SMARTPHONES
HTC misses top 10 list
Six Chinese companies were on a list of the world’s top 10 smartphone brands in terms of shipments last year, but HTC Corp (宏達電) did not make the cut, according to a Taipei-based market research firm. The six Chinese brands were Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Xiaomi Corp (小米), Coolpad Group Ltd (酷派), ZTE Corp (中興), and TCL Corp, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report released yesterday. Lenovo, which merged with Motorola last year, was in third place on the list, after Samsung of South Korea and Apple Inc of the US, the report said. LG, also a South Korean brand, ranked fourth, followed by Huwei, Xiaomi and Coolpad in that order, the report said. Sony of Japan, ZTE and TCL rounded out the top 10, the research firm said. After the merger with Motorola, Lenovo shipped 90 million smartphone units last year, TrendForce said. The figure represented an annual growth of more than 100 percent and put Lenovo in first place among smartphone makers in China and in third spot globally with a market share of 7.9 percent, the research firm said.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Standards group planned
Taiwan and China will jointly set up a working group this year to develop common standards for four information technology sectors, a Taipei-based cross-strait association promoting industrial standards said on Tuesday. The four IT segments are key components such as integrated circuits and panels, communication protocols such as the fifth-generation (5G) mobile network, the Internet of Things and cloud computing applications, and smart cities, said Rock Hsu (許勝雄), vice chairman of Taiwan’s Sinocon Industrial Standards Foundation (華聚產業共同標準基金會), which was set up in December 2005 to form common IT development platforms for the Greater China region. To achieve the target, the foundation and its Chinese counterparts will assemble a working group later this year that will have academics and specialists study the standards of the four IT sectors, Hsu said. Smart city applications, for example, have begun trial operations in more than 200 Chinese cities, with another 400 Chinese cities expected to join the lineup in the near term, 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],”
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