Shares in Taiwan edged lower yesterday, but remained above 9,800 points amid geopolitical uncertainties caused by rising tension between North Korea and the US after a US Navy strike group was deployed toward the Korean Peninsula in a show of military force, dealers said.
The Taiwan Stock Exchange’s main index, the TAIEX, closed down 14.74 points, or 0.15 percent, at 9,817.68, after moving between 9,837.19 and 9,789.59 on turnover of NT$88.63 billion (US$2.9 billion).
Shares opened down 0.86 points at 9,831.56 and hit a low of 9,789.59, but recovered most of their early losses later in the session on the back of electronics stocks.
Flat-panel suppliers AU Optronics Corp (友達) and Innolux Corp (群創) rose 3.64 percent and 6.34 percent to close at NT$12.8 and NT$14.25 respectively.
The performance of optoelectronic stocks was also relatively strong, with Genius Electronic Optical (玉晶光) gaining 5.64 percent to close at NT$313.
Foreign institutional investors bought a net NT$2.886 billion worth of shares.
The market’s focus today is expected to be on contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Largan Precision Co (大立光), a supplier of smartphone camera lenses to Apple Inc, as the companies are scheduled to hold investors’ conferences, dealers 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
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