ELECTRONICS
Sharp to woo local customers
Sharp Corp’s Taiwan branch yesterday unveiled the company’s first 70-inch 8K compatible TV and display in Taiwan. The company said it will release a series of advertisements for Sharp TVs from this month to increase its presence in the local market. The new TV is to be available in China next month, Japan in December and Taiwan in February next year, it said. Orion Ding (丁洋中), sales director of Sharp’s consumer electronics division, said the company is to hold a supply chain forum and a large launch event for other products in Taiwan in early November. In addition, Sharp plans to accelerate its development of 8K cameras, 8K broadcast receivers and other 8K products.
BANKING
Sector’s profits dip slightly
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday said domestic banks posted pretax profits of NT$190.2 billion (US$6.3 billion) in the first seven months of the year, down 1.2 percent from a year earlier. According to the commission’s statistics, about 65.6 percent of the profits are from lenders’ local operations, 24 percent from offshore banking units, 9.4 percent from overseas branches and 1 percent from branches in China. In July, domestic banks saw their pretax profits increase 6 percent year-on-year to NT$28.9 billion, the commission said.
INSURANCE
China Life earnings plummet
Taipei-based China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽) on Wednesday said its total premiums for the first half of this year grew 3 percent year-on-year while its first-year premiums fell 25 percent from a year earlier due to changes in product mix. The life insurer said its cost of liability dropped by 5 basis points to 3.30 percent in the first half from the same period last year, while the average investment return slid to 3.45 percent from 4.11 percent, because of higher hedging costs of 185 basis points due to foreign-exchange volatility, it said. The company’s net profit reached NT$2.344 billion in the first half, with earnings per share of NT$0.67, down 60 percent from a year earlier.
FINANCE
SME lending up 6.8% yearly
Loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rose NT$13.61 billion, or 0.23 percent month-on-month, to NT$5.883 trillion at the end of July, Banking Bureau data released on Tuesday showed. Compared with a year earlier, the figure increased 6.8 percent, the bureau said. The amount accounted for 59.6 percent of total corporate loans and 62.31 percent of total loans extended to the private sector, down 0.08 percentage points and 0.04 percentage points respectively from the previous month, the bureau said in a statement on its Web site. The underlying bad loan ratio remained unchanged at 0.45 percent last month, the bureau said.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung to take pre-orders
Pre-orders for Samsung Electronics Co’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 8, will be accepted from today to Friday next week, Samsung Electronics Taiwan Co Ltd (台灣三星電子) said in a statement last week. Orders can be made via Samsung’s official Web site and the five major mobile network operators: Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) and Taiwan Star Telecom Corp (台灣之星), Samsung Taiwan said. The model will be offered in gray, gold and a limited edition pink color, it 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