SEMICONDUCTORS
Trade show to be biggest yet
SEMI Taiwan yesterday said that it expects the Semicon Taiwan trade show to attract 43,000 visitors this year, which would translate into a 7.5 percent increase from last year’s 40,000 visitors. This year’s show will be the biggest since it began 21 years ago, SEMI said in a statement. About 700 companies are to showcase their latest products at 1,600 booths at the Taipei World Trade Center’s Nangang Exhibition Hall, the organizer said. The annual show is to begin on Sept. 7 and run through Sept. 9. SEMI also said that global semiconductor equipment spending by the foundry sector will likely rise 13 percent to US$36 billion this year and is expected to rise to US$41 billion next year.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Taiwanese ‘like’ Facebook
Facebook Inc yesterday said it has 18 million active users per month in Taiwan and the numbers are set to continue to grow. That suggested Taiwan has one of Facebook’s highest penetration rates in Asian markets, the US company’s Greater China region head Jayne Leung (梁幼莓) told a media gathering in Taipei. Leung said Taiwan is an important market to Facebook, given that Taiwan’s smartphone penetration rate reached more than 90 percent, benefiting the links between Facebook and users in Taiwan. Leung said the company is to release a white paper on cross-border e-commerce in Taiwan this quarter, assisting local e-commerce operators to better understand each country’s consumer behaviors as a way to expand their overseas markets.
ONLINE SHOPPING
TVD momo IPO planned
Momo.com Inc (富邦媒) yesterday said it plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO) for its joint venture TVD momo in Thailand, in which the company holds a 35 percent stake, in the first half of next year at the earliest. Momo said TVD momo generates about 100 million baht (US$2.85 million) per month, with the revenue contribution from online shopping accounting for between 2 and 3 percent. The Taiwanese company said it started a series of promotions last month for the joint venture’s online shopping business in Thailand.
E-PAYMENTS
Garmin, iPass sign deal
Garmin Ltd yesterday announced that it formed a strategic alliance with iPass Corp (一卡通票證公司) to launch a smart wristband in Taiwan in a bid to tap into the nation’s electronics payment market. In addition to the electronics payment function, the smart wristband can monitor the user’s heartbeat, provide sleeping data and remind users to stand up from their chair once in a while to prevent sitting for too long, the company said in a statement.
APPAREL
Yih-Dah Co to be dissolved
Yih-Dah Co Ltd (儀大), the Tainan-based children’s clothing brand operator which owns Les Enphants Co (麗嬰房) and Lovely World (愛的世界), is to dissolve its business, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday. The company stopped trading its shares on the Taipei Exchange in April this year due to its failed investment in China. Last month, the company reported revenue of NT$177.52 million (US$5.55 million), down 49.24 percent from the previous year. The details of the dissolution of the company are to be discussed at a extraordinary shareholders’ meeting next month, Yih-Dah 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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts