STEELMAKERS
China Steel to expand stake
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said its board approved a plan to purchase a NT$939 million (US$29.9 million) stake in a Vietnamese steelmaking unit of Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團). After the transaction, CSC will hold a 25 percent stake in Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業), up from 5 percent, the company said in a statement. The investment is part of CSC’s broader overseas expansion plan, the company said. The deal is expected to deepen the company’s partnership with Formosa and would also pave the way for future collaboration in expanding to other Asian countries, including India and Southeast Asian nations, it said. The board also approved plans to invest an additional NT$869 million in Taiwan Rolling Stock Co Ltd (台灣車輛股份有限公司) and Tang Eng Iron Works Co (唐榮鐵工廠).
TELECOMS
Taiwan Star eyes coverage
Taiwan Star Telecom Co (台灣之星), a telecoms arm of Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), said it plans to boost investment on network deployment with an aim to increase its 4G coverage to 98 percent by the end of this year, while indoor coverage is expected to increase to 80 percent. At the end of last year, the carrier’s 4G coverage had reached 96 percent, Taiwan Star said in a statement on Thursday. The company said new subscribers rose by 20 percent last month after jumping 45 percent in December last year.
PC MAKERS
Sales drop across industry
Following the peak holiday season in December last year, contract computer makers Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), Compal Electronics Co (仁寶電腦) and Inventec Corp (英業達) all reported monthly declines in sales for last month. Quanta’s revenue dropped 21.07 percent monthly to NT$70.12 billion last month. Compal sales declined 17.11 percent monthly to NT$68.73 billion last month, though the month’s sales jumped 28.54 percent from a year earlier. For last month’s sales, Inventec dropped 18.67 percent to NT$29.87 billion from a month earlier. The figure was a 29.5 percent decline from the previous year.
PC MAKERS
Pegatron income improves
Contract notebook computer maker Pegatron Corp (和碩) reported 3.27 percent monthly growth in income to NT$118.04 billion for last month. Pegatron’s sales for last month also jumped 28.98 percent from a year earlier, according to a company filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
TRANSPORTATION
Union seeks Uber informants
The Taipei taxi drivers’ union yesterday said it is offering a reward of NT$500 to people who provide firm evidence that US-based ridesharing service Uber is still operating in the nation, in violation of the law. The union said it worked with other organizations to raise NT$500,000, which would be split among the first 1,000 people who present pictures or video footage that prove Uber is still running a transportation service in Taiwan. The offer lasts until the end of next month, the association said. To obtain the reward, a person would have to report an incident to a motor vehicle office, providing a picture or video of a Uber car’s license plate, a screenshot of a confirmed dispatch order on the Uber app, a bill for the transaction and a confirmation slip from the motor vehicle office after filing the report.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
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