Sharp Corp’s Taiwan branch yesterday announced that it has partnered with retail operator Aurora Telecom Corp (震旦通訊) to expand the Japanese company’s presence in Taiwan via Aurora Telecom’s 150 outlets across the nation.
The announcement came after Aurora Telecom’s parent company, Aurora Group (震旦行), on Friday night said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it plans to sell a 34 percent stake to Sharp Taiwan for NT$546.88 million (US$17.98 million), pending shareholders’ approval.
Sharp (Taiwan) Electronics Corp (台灣夏普) sales and marketing general manager Steven Chang (張凱傑) said Sharp aims to increase its revenue contribution from overseas markets, adding that boosting the company’s performance in Taiwan is Sharp’s priority.
“Sharp needed more brick-and-mortar retail channels in Taiwan. The partnership enables Sharp to quickly reach areas where we could not reach before,” Chang told a news conference at Aurora Telecom’s headquarters in Taipei, adding that Sharp expects Aurora Telecom’s well-trained sales personnel to help Sharp sell its products more easily.
Sharp’s selected products, such as TVs and air purifiers, were placed in Aurora Telecom’s 150 stores over the weekend, Chang said.
When asked if Aurora Telecom’s management would be adjusted, Chang said he cannot comment any further for the time being, as the transaction has not yet gained Aurora Telecom shareholders’ approval.
“What I can say now is that I respect Aurora’s management, given its high operational efficiency,” Chang said.
Aurora Telecom general manager Micro Liao (廖慶章) said the company foresees that the strategic partnership with Sharp will benefit its revenue and profitability in the long term, on the back of consumers’ confidence in Sharp’s high-quality products.
Aurora Telecom plans to continue opening new stores and invest more to train sales staff in a bid to further extend its reach in the Taiwanese market, Liao said, without elaborating.
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