CHIPMAKERS
TSMC to mull dividend
The board of directors of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to hold a meeting today to discuss the firm’s dividend payout for last year, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing on Friday last week. TSMC has said it expects to distribute a cash dividend for last year exceeding the NT$6 dividend it paid on 2015 earnings, as the company was more profitable last year. TSMC’s earnings per share rose to NT$12.89 last year from NT$11.82 in 2015. Based on TSMC’s closing price of NT$185.5 on Friday on the main bourse, the cash dividend yield for TSMC was 3.23 percent, higher than the annual bank deposit rate of about 1 percent. A higher dividend yield also means investors receive a higher return on their investment.
TELECOMS
Chunghwa mulls payouts
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) yesterday said it is considering to offer compensation to its 4G service subscribers, after glitches at the company’s facility disrupted the provision of wireless services for nearly two hours on Sunday. The affected areas included subscribers in Taipei, New Taipei City and Yilan County, the nation’s largest telecom said. Beginning at 3pm subscribers to the company’s 4G services complained that they could not send or receive Line, Facebook and other online messages. Chunghwa Telecom mobile services chief executive Tu Yuan-kuang (涂元光) said subscribers in Taipei, New Taipei City and Yilan County were not able to access online services due to an “equipment abnormality,” but said services were restored at 4:50pm. On Thursday last week, Chunghwa Telecom subscribers were prevented from browsing the Google Web page. According to the National Communications Commission, people using HiNet Internet broadband and mobile services, both of which are operated by Chunghwa Telecom, experienced the problem. Meanwhile, users also reportedly complained that signing into Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail using Google accounts was also restricted. The problem was apparently due to router overload, the commission said, without providing further details. The problem was solved within about an hour.
ELECTRONICS
Oppo eyeing 1m handsets
Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) yesterday said it aims to ship 1 million handsets in the local market this year, up 150 percent from last year’s 400,000 units. The Chinese smartphone vendor told a media gathering that it plans to spend more resources on communicating with local media and consumers. The company is to expand its reach in the market by collaborating with as many as 50 brick-and-mortar retail stores and by opening three after-sales centers this year, Oppo said. The firm would begin taking preorders for its new R9s Plus smartphone priced at NT$17,900 (US$576.86) tomorrow, Oppo said.
ROBOTICS
Hospital to use 10 Zenbos
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) has signed an agreement with Show Chwan Memorial Hospital’s (秀傳醫院) Changhua branch to provide 10 of its Zenbo robots to the hospital as companion robots for the elderly, the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday. The hospital said in the report that the robots could lend workforce support to the hospital after the “one fixed day off and one flexible day off” labor law took effect, as the robot can accompany the elderly and remind them to take their medicine on time.
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