TRADE
Investments in Indonesia rise
Investments in Indonesia have grown rapidly as the New Southbound Policy begins to take hold, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Investments in the first quarter of this year alone reached US$224 million, outpacing last year’s annual total, the ministry said. Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) attributed the rise to more frequent investment forums and discussion events, which has helped companies on both sides overcome a variety of barriers. Indonesia is the nation’s second-most popular investment destination in Southeast Asia, with inflows creating more than 100,000 jobs there, Wang said.
ELECTRONICS
HTC reacts to lawsuit
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it has contacted its smartphone supply chains worldwide to make sure that its operations and consumers will not be affected by a Nichia Corp lawsuit. The filing came after the Japanese LED firm said it filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Germany against HTC, its subsidiary in Germany and e-commerce platform operator Digital River Ireland Ltd over the HTC U Ultra smartphone. Nichia claims that the HTC U Ultra, which features white LED products, infringes on Nichia’s YAG patent. HTC said it always respects intellectual property rights.
FINANCE
CDFH rating unchanged
Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評) yesterday kept its credit rating for China Development Financial Holding Corp (CDFH, 中華開發金控) unchanged, saying that its plan to buy a 25.33 percent stake in China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽保險) might not weaken its credit profile. “The purchase will have a minimal impact on its credit profile, but will broaden its business scope,” the local arm of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in a report. China Development Financial could deem China Life as a subsidiary after the acquisition, Taiwan Ratings said. The ratings firm also stood by its “stable” credit outlook for China Development Financial, saying the acquisition might not alter its business model much.
CRIME
Credit card fraud surges
The National Credit Card Center (聯合信用卡中心) yesterday said that credit card fraud last year surged 55 percent annually to NT$1.27 billion (US$41.8 million). Leaks of credit card numbers stored on online and television shopping platforms accounted for 88.7 percent of credit card fraud, followed by counterfeit cards and lost or stolen cards, the center said. It said that multiple purchases of less than NT$1,000 are made using stolen cards to avoid cardholders receiving automated notifications. People should ask banks to send notifications on all unusual purchases, as well as use one-time passwords, it said.
SHOEMAKERS
Feng Tay profit falls
Feng Tay Enterprise Co (豐泰鞋業) on Wednesday posted net profit of NT$1.92 billion for the first half of this year, a 16.8 percent annual decline, dragged down by a strong New Taiwan dollar. The figure translated into earnings per share of NT$2.88, down from NT$3.46 a year earlier, the company said in a statement. In the first six months of the year, the firm sold 49.5 million pairs of shoes, a 2.8 percent increase from same period last year, data showed. Feng Tay forecast that its shoe sales for this quarter would grow 16 percent year-on-year and 3 percent quarter-on-quarter to 26 million pairs.
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
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],”