SEMICONDUCTORS
MediaTek sales beat target
Handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday reported better-than-expected sales of NT$56.96 billion (US$1.73 billion) last quarter, up 21.08 percent from a quarter earlier and higher than the company’s sales guidance of between NT$51.7 billion and NT$55.5 billion. Last month alone, the company’s sales rose 5.43 percent from a month earlier and 8.06 percent from a year earlier to NT$20.04 billion. However, cumulative sales in the first nine months of the year dropped 3.85 percent year-on-year to NT$151.54 billion.
MANUFACTURING
HMI Q3 sales nosedive
Electron beam wafer inspection equipment maker Hermes Microvision Inc (HMI, 漢微科) yesterday reported declining sales for last month and last quarter. The company said that sales dropped 12 percent year-on-year and 16 percent month-on-month to NT$398 million last month, driving its third-quarter sales to decrease by 54 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$1.05 billion. In August, the company forecast that third-quarter sales would decline by 30 to 40 percent from the second quarter. In the first three quarters of the year, cumulative sales rose 9 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.93 billion.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Lextar sees sales dip
Lextar Electronics Corp (隆達電子), which produces upstream LED chips and provides downstream packaging services, yesterday reported weaker-than-expected sales for last quarter. Third-quarter sales reached NT$3.51 billion, down 16.22 percent year-on-year and 3 percent quarter-on-quarter. The figure is also lower than Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) estimate of NT$3.81 billion. In the first nine months, cumulative sales totaled NT$10.61 billion, down 5.08 percent from a year earlier.
TRAVEL
Boom lifts Lion’s sales
Lion Travel Service Co Ltd (雄獅旅行社), the nation’s largest outbound travel service company, yesterday said that sales rose 11.7 percent from the same period last year to a record NT$6.13 billion last quarter, aided by a travel boom, especially to north Asian destinations. From January through last month, cumulative sales totaled NT$16.29 billion, up 20.57 percent year-on-year.
ELECTRONICS
Synnex posts weak results
Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強國際) yesterday said that sales last quarter fell 7 percent from a year earlier to NT$84.5 billion, after last month’s sales dropped 12 percent year-on-year to NT$29.99 billion. Synnex, Asia’s largest distributor of technology products and electronics components, said that its semiconductor components business saw annual sales growth of 5 percent last quarter. However, overall sales were dented by declines in other businesses, such as information technology, consumer electronics and communications products, Synnex said.
PANELMAKERS
AUO shuffles management
AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) yesterday announced management changes to take effect on Nov. 1, promoting vice president Michael Tsai (蔡國新) to president and chief operating officer, while AUO chairman Paul Peng (彭双浪) is to double as chief executive officer. Chief financial executive Andy Yang (楊本豫) is to be appointed chief strategy officer, while his post will be filled by associate vice president Tseng Yu-chih (曾煜智), the company said in a statement.
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