PANEL MAKERS
Innolux revenue falls 24.5%
Innolux Corp (群創), the nation’s largest LCD panel maker, yesterday posted a 24.5 percent decline in revenue for last month to NT$27.21 billion (US$864.17 million), compared with NT$36.05 billion in January. Innolux attributed the decline to seasonally slow demand and fewer working days. Shipments of PC and TV flat panels contracted 22.5 percent to 8.86 million units from 11.44 million units in January. Shipments of small and medium panels plunged 35.5 percent to 15.4 million units from 23.85 million units in January. On an annual basis, revenue grew 9.4 percent from NT$24.87 billion.
CHIPMAKERS
ASE revenue drops 18.7%
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s biggest chip packager and tester, yesterday said revenue shrank 18.7 percent to NT$18.98 billion last month, from NT$23.36 billion in the prior month. On an annual basis, revenue grew 16.9 percent from NT$16.24 billion.
CHIPMAKERS
UMC sees revenue contract
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the nation’s second-largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said revenue dropped 6.37 percent to NT$12.06 billion last month from NT$12.88 billion in January. That represented an annual growth of 16.58 percent from NT$10.34 billion. In the first two months of this year, revenue totaled NT$24.94 billion. Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) expects UMC’s revenue to reach NT$38.35 billion this quarter.
PC MAKERS
Wistron sees annual growth
Contract notebook PC maker Wistron Corp (緯創) yesterday reported 26.09 percent annual growth to NT$44.9 billion for last month. Monthly revenue dropped 8.96 percent from NT$49.32 billion in the previous month, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. For the first two months of this year, revenue totaled NT$99.22 billion, up 26.23 percent from NT$74.64 billion the previous year. Compal Electronics Co (仁寶電腦) posted revenue of NT$54.61 billion for last month, down 20.54 percent from last year’s NT$49.51 billion. The figure plunged 20.54 percent from the previous month’s NT$68.73 billion. Revenue totaled NT$123.34 billion for the first two months of this year, up 19.77 percent from the previous year.
COMPONENTS
Lite-On revenue jumps 24%
Electronics component maker Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$14.38 billion for last month, a 24 percent jump from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, revenue declined 7 percent from the previous month, due to fewer working days because of the Lunar New Year holiday, the company said in a statement. Cumulative sales for January and last month totaled NT$33.36 billion, up 0.73 percent from NT$33.11 billion last year.
SMARTPHONES
HTC US market share wanes
HTC Corp’s (宏達電) share of the US smartphone market continued to fall in the three months ending in January, amid competition from Apple Inc and South Korean phone makers. The Taoyuan-based company remained the fifth-largest smartphone vendor in the US with a 3.8 percent share between November last year and January, dropping 0.3 percentage points from August-October last year, according to a report published last week by market research firm comScore Inc.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the