Pegatron Corp (和碩), one of the main assemblers of Apple Inc’s iPhones, is not only assembling smartphones for the US company, but also providing maintenance services for it, chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) said yesterday.
“We have a repair and maintenance service center with about 800 local employees that was specifically set up for smartphone devices,” Tung told reporters on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Taipei Game Show at the Taipei World Trade Center.
This is the first time that Pegatron disclosed the information.
Apple last year worked with Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), the main rival of Pegatron’s iPhone assembling business, allowing Foxconn to repair and sell used iPhones in China.
Tung said he has been thinking about entering the repair and maintenance business since Pegatron split from Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) in 2007.
“Do not underestimate the business even though it only has a few million New Taiwan dollars net profits at the moment. It is a good business to Pegatron and it is expanding,” he said.
Tung said Pegatron has a maintenance center near Narita International Airport in Tokyo, one near the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, as well as in Shanghai and the US.
“Pegatron has more than 2,000 employees in the repair and maintenance business,” Tung said.
He said as Pegatron has established a reputation in repair and maintenance, the company now not only repairs handsets, but also receives other technology products.
He said Pegatron has obtained Apple’s approval to repair other companies’ items at the facility in Japan.
“Smartphones, notebooks, servers, desktops… We even received air conditioners with broken sensors,” Tung said.
He said Apple would send batches of smartphones waiting to be repaired from other Asian countries to Pegatron’s maintenance center in Japan.
The products sent to Japan do not need to go through customs as they do not enter the Japanese market, Tung said.
The maintenance center in Japan has an automated storage and retrieval system to increase the efficiency of Pegatron’s maintenance services, he said.
Tung said as far as he knows, Pegatron’s maintenance business is the largest by scale and product range among Taiwanese contract electronics makers.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last