MANUFACTURING
Catcher to recruit workers
Catcher Technology Co (可成科技), a metal casing supplier to Apple Inc, said it will host a recruitment event at its new plant in Tainan tomorrow, with the aim of hiring at least 100 research and development personnel. It will be the company’s largest recruitment drive in Taiwan in recent years, Catcher said in a statement. “The hiring is aimed at growing Catcher’s operations in Taiwan to meet the demand for increased production capacity from our clients,” the company said.
BANKING
QR payments to expand
Financial Information Service Co (FISC, 財金資訊), which facilitates interbank operations, on Thursday said that the option of making person-to-person payments through QR code systems could be made available to more domestic banks as early as November. Three domestic banks have added the function to their mobile banking apps and a wider release is expected for other domestic lenders by November, FISC said. Enhanced peer-to-peer payments could replace the need for third-party payment service providers, the company said.
AVIATION
EVA to add Vienna flights
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) on Thursday said it would add three weekly non-stop flights to its Taipei-Vienna route from March 9 next year, in the hope of attracting more transit passengers. The airline operates four round-trip flights per week between Taipei and Vienna, with a stopover in Bangkok. EVA said it is hoping that the direct flights will appeal to travelers from central and eastern Europe who wish to either stop in Taiwan or travel onward to other parts of Asia.
LIFE INSURANCE
Fubon to develop site
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) yesterday announced that it would begin plans to develop a commercial property on six land parcels in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) that it acquired in 2014. The company said that Chien Kuo Construction Co Ltd (建國工程) was awarded the contract with a bid of NT$1.63 billion (US$53.73 million). The site is adjacent to a prime commercial area and is accessible by the Mass Rapid Transit’s Songshan and Wenhu lines with heavy tourist and white-collar traffic, the company said.
TECHNOLOGY
Line Pay tops 2.2m users
Line Corp yesterday announced that users of Line Pay, the popular messaging app’s payment service, have exceeded 2.2 million since its launch in August 2015. The payment service saw the number of users exceed the 1 million mark in April last year and has continued to expand its presence among online merchants as well as brick-and-mortar retailers, such as two of Taiwan’s biggest convenience stores and department store franchises, the company said in a statement.
MANUFACTURING
TIER reports sluggish month
The local manufacturing sector continued to signal sluggish growth for the third month in a row last month, although the composite index and other indicators rose slightly from July, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) report said yesterday. The institute said that the composite index for the manufacturing sector rose 0.95 points to 11.49, from 10.54 in July. The institute said the outlook for manufacturers for the rest of the year remains conservative amid uncertainty over sales of new iPhones and competition from China.
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],”