Inventec Corp (英業達) yesterday said it is to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan, as well as an “industry 4.0” R&D center and a 5G connectivity R&D center in China this year, as the company continues its corporate transformation.
“There will be no limit to our budget allocation for the investment in AI, industry 4.0 and 5G technologies, as these will be the core of Inventec’s competitiveness in the coming years,” chairman Tom Cho (卓桐華) told a news conference before the company’s annual banquet for employees at the Nangang Exhibition Hall in Taipei.
Inventec would establish an AI R&D center at its headquarters in Taipei in the first half of this year and plans to invite at least 10 domestic or international AI talents to lead the team, Cho said, adding that the industrial automation R&D team would be based in Tianjin, China, with about 1,000 employees.
The AI and industry 4.0 technologies would be utilized in Inventec’s production lines to raise the company’s operational and production efficiency, he said.
As for the development of 5G connectivity devices, Cho said Inventec Appliance Co (英華達), the company’s “smart” device subsidiary, would take charge of this task in collaboration with several “smart” devices clients.
An expansion in business helped boost the company’s overall revenue by 9.11 percent year-on-year to a record-high NT$467.51 billion (US$16.07 billion) last year, Cho said.
“Revenue from the wireless acoustic products surged by more than 30 percent last year. We believe the strong momentum could continue this year,” Cho added.
Inventec is the sole assembler of Apple Inc’s AirPod, which connects wirelessly to iPhones. The company was forecast to have shipped 20 million units of the device last year, analysts said.
Inventec Appliance chief executive officer David Ho (何代水) did not specify the number of AirPod shipments, but said the firm has expanded its production capacity of the device by 30 percent this quarter from the same period a year ago.
Ho also said about 10,000 workers at Inventec’s Shanghai plant would continue working during the Lunar New Year holiday to meet strong demand from the US client this quarter.
The company is also one of two assemblers of Apple’s HomePod speaker, which is to hit US stores on Feb. 9.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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