SOLAR PANELS
Bidders win PV projects
The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said that 328 bidders have won rooftop solar PV equipment projects across Taiwan for public schools, government buildings and state-run companies, which is to generate 96,791.54 kilowatt-hours of energy. The Bureau of Energy said that to encourage manufacturers to install solar panel rooftop equipment via open bidding for the development of green energy in Taiwan, the ministry has simplified the application process.
MACHINE TOOLS
Taipei show gets under way
The annual Taipei International Machine Tool Show is to open today with more than 1,000 domestic and international machine tool manufacturers from 18 countries set to display their latest products, co-organizer the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (貿協) said yesterday. The council said the biennial trade show will home a total of 5,411 booths at the Taipei World Trade Center, the Nangang Exhibition Hall and the Taipei Expo Park. The council said it expects the six-day trade show to attract more than 53,000 visitors.
MACHINE TOOLS
Japan seen as main threat
South Korea has been portrayed as the biggest threat to the nation’s machine tool sector as it prepares to sign a free-trade deal with China, but one Taiwanese machine tool executive said the sector is under much greater pressure from Japan. Taichung-based Hiwin Technologies Corp (上銀科技) chairman Eric Chuo (卓永財) said that the dramatic depreciation of the Japanese yen has strengthened the competitiveness of Japanese machine tool exporters. Machining centers produced by medium-sized Japanese machine tool companies “are already cheaper than Taiwan’s,” said Chuo, whose company produces a complete line of motion control products and employs more than 3,500 people around the world. Speaking of the imminent China-South Korean free-trade agreement initialed on Wednesday last week, Chuo said he felt the deal would not greatly affect the nation’s machine tool industry. Chuo said South Korea is not strong in producing machining centers, which are Taiwan’s main machine tool export to China. China is Taiwan’s largest market for machine tools, with 32.4 percent of machine tool exports shipped to China last year, according to Ministry of Economic Affairs data.
SMARTPHONES
Acer unveils smartphone
Ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Spain, scheduled to run from yesterday through Thursday, Taiwanese PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) on Sunday unveiled a new Windows-based smartphone that can be upgraded to accommodate the future Windows Phone 10 operating system. The Acer Liquid M220, which currently runs on Windows Phone 8.1, but can be upgraded to Windows 10 later this year, is targeting budget-first consumers with a 4-inch, 233 pixels per inch display, a 5-megapixel main camera and a starting price of 79 euros (US$88.45), Acer said in a news release. The M220 fully supports Microsoft Corp’s applications and services, such as OneDrive, Skype, Office and the Cortana virtual assistant. The handset will be available next month through selected retailers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “We are proudly introducing our first Windows Phone 8.1 [device] and simultaneously announcing its future upgradability to Windows Phone 10,” Acer said in a statement. Acer also launched three low-cost Android-powered phones — the feature-rich Liquid Jade Z, the entry-level Liquid Z520 and the Liquid Z220.
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