TELECOMS
APT extends rate plan
Asia Pacific Telecom Co (APT, 亞太電信), a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday said it is extending its NT$999 (US$32.31) rate plan with unlimited data and voice calls for another month due to its popularity. The rate plan was due to end on Feb. 28 after an earlier extension. APT said the rate plan has helped grow its number of 4G subscribers to 1.67 million by the end of last month. The rate plan also helped boost revenue from high average revenue per user subscribers by 30 percent in the first two months after its launch in December.
TELECOMS
Chunghwa to hire 1,600
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom, said it plans to recruit 1,600 employees this year, including at its subsidiaries, half of them new college graduates. The company made the remarks during a job fair in Tainan on Sunday, which marked its first appearance at the event. The company said it is looking for new hires with expertise in Internet security, the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and marketing. Chunghwa Telecom said the new recruits would have the opportunity to increase their annual wages to NT$1 million within three years.
ELECTRONICS
Americans favor Apple
Apple Inc dominated the market share of smartphone subscribers in the US in the three-month period from November last year to January, with 44.6 percent of the total, according to a comScore Inc report. Citing data from comScore MobiLens on the US smartphone market, the report said that South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co was second with a 28 percent share. HTC Corp (宏達電) ranked fifth at 2.3 percent, behind South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc with 10.3 percent and Motorola Inc with 4.3 percent. In terms of operating systems, the Android platform led with 53.2 percent of the US market. Apple’s iOS platform was second at 44.6 percent.
ENTERTAINMENT
Taipei, Paris ink film pact
The Taipei Film Commission and Paris Coproduction Village yesterday signed an agreement in Hong Kong to further their cooperation in movie making. The agreement was signed by Taipei Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Chung Yung-feng (鍾永豐) and Paris Coproduction Village CEO Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, as they attended an international film festival in the territory. Chung said people in the French movie industry already know Taipei quite well and have invited movie directors from Taiwan to visit Paris under several exchange programs. Fleurantin said he also wanted to promote cooperation between the two nations’ filmmaking industries, adding that the growing movie market in Asia is important to Europe. Under the agreement, both sides will select movies that will be jointly shot in Taiwan.
ELECTRONICS
Andes making stock debut
Andes Technology Corp (晶心科技), a processor patent developer 15 percent owned by handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科), is set to debut on the main bourse today at NT$65.1 a share. The initial public offering will push the company’s valuation to NT$2.64 billion, based on outstanding shares of 40.62 million. Andes is the world’s No. 5 processor patent developer, competing with industry leader SoftBank ARM, it said. Established in 2005, Andes primarily designs embedded processors used in a wide range of electronics, from consumer to mobile devices and Internet of Things, to electronics for cars.
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six