Taiwanese online shopping portal PChome Online Inc (網路家庭) yesterday launched an instant messaging application in a bid to enter the mobile messaging market.
“Instant messaging is a very important service on mobile devices. This means a new business opportunity and PChome will not be absent from it,” PChome chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) told a press conference.
The messaging app, named PChome IM, targets general users and is available in Mandarin and English, PChome marketing director Lin Mu-ping (林慕屏) said.
Photo: Liao Chien-ying, Taipei Times
The marking director said given that PChome has been in the e-commerce industry for decades and has more than 20 million registered users of the PChome shopping portal in domestic and overseas markets, the company hopes the app could gradually attract 20 million users.
She declined to provide a target timetable for reaching that goal.
Lin said the company’s in-house PChome Cloud Message technology will accelerate the message transmission speed to only two seconds, adding that senders will see statuses of “sending,” “sent,” “arrived” and “read” on the app.
The statuses are designed to relieve senders’ potential anxiety over not knowing whether their messages have been delivered, Lin said.
Lin said that unlike other instant messaging apps, users can download stickers for free from the app, while sticker creators are not required to pay slotting fees to PChome.
There are already more than 3,000 free stickers on the app, and PChome plans to launch a set of new stickers every day to attract users, she added.
Apart from PChome, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) and telecoms Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) have also launched instant messaging apps targeting corporate and general users.
Mobile messaging giant Line Corp has the largest user base in the nation, with about 17 million registered users.
Separately, PChome yesterday released its latest quarterly sales results, posting NT$5.46 billion (US$175 million) for last quarter. That represents strong annual growth of 14.46 percent from last year’s NT$4.77 billion, but the figure is 6.5 percent lower than NT$5.84 billion in the first quarter.
The online shopping portal company’s consolidated sales totaled NT$11.19 billion in the first half of this year, an increase of 18.23 percent from NT$9.47 billion made in the same period last year.
PChome shares surged 2.39 percent to NT$471 in Taipei trading yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which gained 1.34 percent.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure