INSURANCE
Chaoyang auction fails
Chaoyang Life Insurance Co (朝陽人壽), an insolvent insurer that was put in government receivership in January, failed to find a buyer at an auction yesterday. The troubled insurer is to stay under the management of the semi-official Insurance Stabilization Fund, the Financial Supervisory Commission said. No buyers submitted a bid meeting the minimum amount, the commission said. Chaoyang Life is the fourth insurer to be bailed out by the government in the past seven years.
SOLAR
Motech reports Q3 loss
Solar cell maker Motech Industries Inc (茂迪) yesterday said it swung into quarterly losses of NT$1.13 billion (US$35.78 million) last quarter as prices tumbled, ending three straight quarters of profitability. In the second quarter, the company made NT$3.03 billion in net profit. Gross margin worsened to minus-18 percent last quarter, compared with gross margin of 9.7 percent in the prior quarter. Revenue plunged 42 percent to NT$5.1 billion last quarter, from the second quarter’s NT$8.84 billion. In the third quarter last year, Motech made a net profit of NT$450 million, while gross margin was 7.27 percent.
CHIPMAKERS
Realtek profit hits NT$813m
Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱), which supplies Wi-Fi and TV chips, yesterday reported NT$813 million in pretax profit for last quarter, down 26.8 percent from a quarter earlier, according to a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. In the second quarter, Realtek made NT$1.11 billion in pretax profit. Operating income dropped nearly 10 percent to NT$975 million last quarter, from NT$1.08 billion in the prior quarter. Operating margin dropped to 9.47 percent, from 10.97 percent in the previous quarter. However, revenue rose 4.39 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$10.28 billion, the highest level in the company’s history. In the first three quarters of this year, pretax profit was NT$2.57 billion, the filing showed.
CHIPMAKERS
Epistar settles patent suit
Epistar Corp (晶電), the nation’s leading LED chipmaker, yesterday said it agreed to settle a patent infringement lawsuit against Adamax Inc pending in the US District Court, Northern District of California. Epistar said it would end the court action against Adamax over sales of LED filament products, according to the terms of the settlement. Adamax is to pay ongoing royalties based on its sales of products that breach Epistar patents, the Taiwanese firm said. In the suit Epistar claimed that Adamax’s LED lighting products and technology infringed six of its patents.
COMPUTERS
Changhua, Microsoft ink deal
The Changhua County Government has signed an agreement with Microsoft Taiwan to jointly push a cloud-based education project, a spokesman for the county government said on Sunday. The agreement was signed by Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) and Microsoft Taiwan general manager Steven Shaw (邵光華) at a ceremony on Tuesday last week. Wei said the cooperative venture with Microsoft would help Changhua promote information technology at schools, adding that he hoped the project would yield positive results in the near future. Wei said that the project would transform the county into a development center for digital technology talent. According to the agreement, Microsoft is to provide Office 365 online cloud services to students, teachers and administrative staff in schools.
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