TRADE
Competitiveness to fall
Taiwan’s overall trade competitiveness ranking could fall this year by two places to 14th out of 54 major and emerging economies, a survey said yesterday. The poll, conducted by the Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei, revealed that Singapore is poised to take the leading position for a fourth consecutive year, followed by the US and Canada in second and third place respectively, while Taiwan continues its two-year plummet in global trade competitiveness. The survey evaluates the degree of freedom, convenience, ease and exposure to risk for trading in world markets. The association attributed Taiwan’s poor performance in the survey to its slow progress in securing trade agreements. The association urged the government to accelerate efforts in securing trade agreements, boosting international promotion, establishing third-party payment services and devising specialized marketing strategies to tap into niche markets abroad.
MANUFACTURING
Output value to rise
The value of the output of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector is expected to grow by 2.93 percent this year from a year earlier, an upward revision of 0.07 percentage points from a previous estimate, because of the global economic recovery, the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center said on Tuesday. The center, a research unit of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院), said the local manufacturing sector would generate output worth NT$19.55 trillion (US$619 billion) this year, up from the estimated NT$18.99 trillion for last year. The report said that manufacturing output is expected to grow 2.32 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, 2.5 percent in the second quarter, 3.8 percent in the third quarter and 3.01 percent in the fourth quarter.
ELECTRONICS
Apple challenging Samsung
Apple Inc is chipping away at Samsung Electronics Co’s dominant position on its home turf in South Korea — thanks to its new iPhone 6 series. Apple captured a record 33 percent market share in South Korea in November last year, the highest-ever for a foreign brand, according to a monthly report released on Wednesday by Hong Kong-based market research company Counterpoint. In contrast, Samsung’s share slipped to 46 percent after hovering at about 60 percent for five months.
REAL ESTATE
LCY Chemical sells land
LCY Chemical Corp (李長榮化工) on Wednesday said it would book a divestment gain of NT$169.75 million by selling idle real-estate assets in Greater Kaohsiung to China Steel Corp (中鋼). LCY said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing that it had sold a plot of land and buildings on the land in Siaogang District (小港) for NT$937 million to China Steel, which is the nation’s only integrated steelmaker.
COMMERCE
Chamber announces roles
The European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan on Wednesday said two directors-elect, STMicroelectronics Taiwan general manager Giuseppe Izzo and BNP Paribas Taiwan manager Olivier Rousselet were elected as vice chairmen of the chamber. The board also elected Societe Generale Taipei Branch head Godwin Chang (張建西) and Siemens Ltd Taiwan president and chief executive officer Erdal Elver to serve as the chamber’s executive directors, the chamber said in a statement. The chamber promotes European business interests in Taiwan.
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
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