ELECTRONICS
Inventec records sales boost
Inventec Corp (英業達) yesterday said its sales grew 3.32 percent month-on-month to NT$36.33 billion (US$1.1 billion) last month, driven by increasing demand for handheld devices, solar power products and PCs. On an annual basis, sales declined 7.29 percent from last year’s NT$39.19 billion, the company said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing. The contract electronics maker said revenues from its handheld devices and solar power products are expected to grow by a double-digit percentage this month, while sales of notebooks and servers would remain flat.
CHIPMAKERS
Nanya revenue drops 1.2%
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said its revenue slid 1.2 percent to NT$3.37 billion last month, compared with NT$3.41 billion in October. That represented an annual decline of 17.59 percent from NT$4.09 billion the previous year. In the first 11 months, Nanya posted NT$40.31 billion in revenue, down 10.32 percent from NT$44.95 billion in the same period last year. Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a joint venture between Nanya and Micron Technology Inc, yesterday said its revenue shrank 22.7 percent to NT$3.43 billion last month from NT$4.43 billion the previous month. On an annual basis, revenue plunged 51 percent from NT$7 billion.
CHIP TESTERS
Revenue falls at ASE, SPIL
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s largest chip packager and tester, yesterday said its revenue contracted 5.4 percent to NT$26.27 billion last month, compared with NT$27.75 billion in October. The figure was up 4 percent from the previous year. That brought ASE’s total revenue in the first 11 months of the year to NT$261.77 billion, up about 13 percent year-on-year from NT$231.72 billion. Local rival Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) yesterday said its revenue fell 4.2 percent to NT$6.77 billion last month from NT$7.07 billion in October. That was a 6.1 percent decline from NT$7.21 billion the previous year. In the first 11 months, SPIL’s revenue fell 0.42 percent to NT$75.91 billion from NT$76.23 billion the previous year.
CREDIT CARDS
Spending passes NT$2tn
Annual credit-card spending has passed NT$2 trillion, but the average annual spending per card is still lower than in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, the National Credit Card Center of the Republic of China said. Among the four Asian Tigers, credit-card spending in Taiwan averaged US$1,821 per card last year, compared with about US$3,000 in the three other nations, the data showed. That was despite Taiwan having a higher number of cardholders and credit cards in circulation than Singapore and Hong Kong, the center said.
STOCK MARKET
TAIEX closes 0.66% higher
The TAIEX closed up 55.67 points, or 0.66 percent, at 8,454.27 yesterday, after moving between 8,432.47 and 8,535.36, on turnover of NT$87.62 billion. The bellwether electronics sector finished up 0.99 percent, while the semiconductor sector closed up 1.77 percent and the computer sector was up 1.19 percent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the local market, rose 2.14 percent to close at NT$143.5. Largan Precision Co (大立光), the most expensive stock, fell 5.34 percent to close at NT$2,395.
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],”
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
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