STOCK MARKET
Largan shares tumble
With the market’s expectations of sluggish sales of the new iPhone 6S, Largan Precision Co (大立光), a smartphone camera lens supplier to Apple Inc, and also the most expensive stock on the local market, fell 5.22 percent, or NT$135, to close at NT$2,450 in Taipei trading. More than 1.98 million Largan shares changed hands, with day trading value of NT$4.92 billion topping the local bourse.
STOCK MARKET
Acer shares rally
Shares of Acer Inc (宏碁), which rose to take the No. 4 sales position in the Western European PC market during the third quarter, gained 4.26 percent to NT$14.7 in Taipei trading yesterday. The company recently initiated a three-year plan to tap into the high-end PC gaming market with its Predator sub-brand. The company has also been ramping up investments into robotics and sports wearable devices to provide new services powered by its cloud-computing platform.
SEMICONDUCTORS
TSMC rejects rumors
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday rebutted a media report saying that the company has decided to set up a 12-inch silicon wafer plant in Nanjing. The chip manufacturer, a supplier for Apple Inc, is still evaluating an investment project in China and has not finalized it, TSMC acting spokesperson Elizabeth Sun (孫又文) said, adding that the company would make a formal announcement when a decision has been made.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained