Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) is to cut 400 jobs at its Taoyuan factory by the end of next month as part of its efforts to reduce costs, the Taoyuan City Government confirmed yesterday.
The layoff plan, which was sent to the local government on Friday last week, is to affect about 5 percent of the nearly 9,000 employees at the factory, according to local media reports.
HTC declined to comment and reiterated its earlier announcement that the company plans to cut 15 percent of its global workforce as part of a business realignment plan.
The program includes the establishment of new business units to create profitable growth in the company’s key areas of premium smartphones, virtual reality and connected lifestyle products, HTC said.
‘SIM-FREE’ EXPANSION
Separately, HTC said it is ready to take advantage of Japan’s unlocked mobile phone market, since wireless carriers there recently lifted network restrictions for their subscribers.
Since the restrictions were removed in May, smartphones and tablets are being sold in Japan with unlocked SIM cards at the customer’s request and at no extra cost. This allows subscribers to the usual two-year contracts to sign up for alternative plans if they want to.
The move is expected to spur more competitive pricing among Japan’s three biggest mobile carriers, and HTC North Asia president Jack Tong (董俊良) has forecast significant growth in the unlocked cellphone market.
The overall unlocked cellphone market in Japan, also known as the “SIM-free” market, is estimated to grow from the current 1 million units to 10 million units in the next five to 10 years, changing the face of Japan’s smartphone market, which has been heavily subsidized by wireless network providers, Tong said.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day