ELECTRONICS
Viveport Arcade launched
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday launched its self-developed Viveport Arcade, a location-based entertainment platform for virtual reality (VR) technologies. The Taiwanese company has inked a strategic agreement with Leke VR (北京樂客靈境科技), with the first batch of Viveport Arcades to be exclusively available on the Chinese company’s platform, HTC said in a statement. The strategic cooperation between HTC and Leke VR is to be deployed at 1,000 selected Leke VR experience stores in China by the end of the year to help promote the development of the offline VR entertainment industry, HTC said.
EQUITIES
Shares extend their losses
Shares in Taiwan extended their losses from the previous session to end lower yesterday, with the weighted index falling below the 9,300-point mark in the wake of the latest losses on Wall Street, which raised worries about a further downturn in the US market in the wake of its strong showing, dealers said. Large-cap stocks in the bellwether electronics sector led the TAIEX lower as investors were led by the fall in high-tech stocks on Wall Street on Friday last week, they said. The financial sector, which has gained significantly on hopes of a widening interest-rate spread, also fell as investors seized on a weaker Wall Street to lock in earlier gains, they added.
ECONOMY
Minister bullish on growth
National Development Council Minister Chen Tain-jy (陳添枝) yesterday said that the council has set a target that GDP growth will top 2 percent next year. Speaking at a meeting of the Economics Committee of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Chen told lawmakers that the economy has been in consolidation mode, but it has the potential to grow about 3 percent next year. Chen’s forecast was more upbeat than the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which updated its forecast late last month and said that the economy would grow 1.87 percent next year. The statistics agency forecast that GDP growth for this year would be 1.35 percent, compared with 0.72 percent last year.
HOSPITALITY
Regent eyes newlyweds
The Regent Taipei (晶華酒店) yesterday introduced an offering for people intending to tie the knot next year, including new food and beverage choices, and exclusive partnership with Regent Galleria and options to plan wedding ceremonies or honeymoons at Regent Hotels worldwide. The new wedding package, “The Moment,” includes reworked appetizer and dessert options, in addition to signature menus and the popular “Lady M” dessert, the hotel said in a statement. Couples who wed at the Regent Taipei would also be given a Regent wedding card, allowing them to purchase the 12 traditional gifts required at marriage ceremonies at discounted prices, it said. If couples spend more than a specified amount, they would receive a discount on the wedding banquet, it said.
MACHINERY
Hiwin to build Suzhou plant
Leading machinery maker Hiwin Technologies Co (上銀科技) yesterday said it is to spend 127.5 million yuan (US$18.36 million) on a new plant in China’s Suzhou Industrial Park (蘇州工業園區), in an effort to expand its capacity. Hiwin is also planning to invest another NT$4 billion to NT$5 billion (US$125 million to US$156 million) to meet rising demand from its customers, compared with this year’s NT$3.5 billion, chairman Eric Chuo (卓永財) said last month.
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
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