SMARTPHONES
HTC to sell Shanghai facility
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said it would sell a manufacturing plant and a plot of land in Shanghai to Shanghai Xingbao Information Technology Co (上海星保信息科技) for 630 million yuan (US$91.15 million) as part of an asset rationalization. HTC is expected to book disposal gains of 147.76 million yuan from the transaction, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. HTC said the disposal of the land and plant would not affect its head count, production capacity or operations, adding that its manufacturing lines are centralized in Taoyuan. HTC reported net losses of NT$10.56 billion (US$342.4 million at the current exchange rate) for last year, compared with a net loss of NT$15.53 billion in 2015. HTC’s cumulative revenue in the first two months of this year plunged 12.58 percent to NT$9.33 billion, company data showed.
AIRLINES
SIA eyes better performance
A Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIA) official yesterday said that the airline is expecting better performance in Taiwan this year after a sales drop last year, which was partly due to the shrinking cross-strait market. The huge drop in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan last year led to the market shrinkage, which in turn has stirred local carriers’ interest in investing in Southeast Asia, Singapore Airlines Taiwan office general manager Nelson Low (劉家福) said. An increasing number of flights provided by carriers such as China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) and EVA Air Corp (長榮航空) has increased competition in Southeast Asia, he said at a news conference.
E-COMMERCE
Shopee to introduce fees
Singapore-based mobile auction app operator Shopee Co Ltd’s (蝦皮拍賣) Taiwan branch yesterday said it would start charging transaction fees of between 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent on credit card payments from sellers in the nation from April 17. The company currently does not charge sellers. Shopee Taiwan said it hopes the fee mechanism will benefit its long-term development. The company plans to increase its number of employees in Taiwan from 100 to 280 next quarter to meet the needs of an increasing number of local Shopee users.
RAW MATERIALS
FPG to boost unit’s funding
Four major units of Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said they would inject US$220 million into subsidiary Formosa Resources Corp (台塑資源), which develops coal and iron mines to provide raw materials for the group. The funds are to boost Formosa Resources’ operating capital and expand iron ore mining operations, a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Yuan deposits fall 0.28%
The nation’s yuan deposits last month totaled 310.09 billion yuan, a decline of 0.28 percent from January, as both individual and corporate customers trimmed positions in the Chinese currency, the central bank said yesterday. Yuan deposits at domestic banking units fell 260 million yuan, while offshore banking units shed 653 million yuan, the central bank said. The adjustments did not necessarily reflect yuan price movements, but had more to do with cash flow management, it added. While investors will be keeping their eyes on the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy today, most have already moved funds where they see fit, the bank 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