Choco Media Co (巧克科技新媒體), an online content start-up, yesterday said it is in sales talks with potential partners from Southeast Asia, as the two-year-old business seeks to increase its revenue and user base.
Duplicating the business model of US online content giant Netflix Inc, Choco Media last year started producing its own movies, drama series and short videos and and offering them for free to better cater to its audience.
Its blockbuster romantic TV drama series HIStory has been seen by more than 5 million viewers since it became available in February, the company said.
HIStory season two is in production based on the popularity of season one, it said.
Last year, Choco Media spent NT$50 million (US$1.65 million) producing seven movies, TV dramas and short videos. The company signed 1.5 million users and recorded 28 million views a month, the company said.
The company plans to double its budget next year and produce 15 original content items and increase its user base to 3 million.
The Taipei-based over-the-top (OTT) content provider said it is stepping up efforts to expand its reach to Southeast Asia.
The company is in talks with potential partners to distribute its original content later this year, before launching its app services in the region next year, Liu said.
Choco Media, founded by three university graduates last year, said it secured an unspecified investment from local online game developer Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子) earlier this year.
Gamania holds about a 30 percent stake in the firm.
“We need a capital injection to fund content production and content acquisition,” Liu said. “The management team still holds a controlling stake of more than 50 percent.”
To increase its revenue sources, Choco Media yesterday launched paid-service viewing that is advertisement free. It aims to have 3 percent of its users sign up for the new service that costs NT$150 per month.
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
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