Ruten.com (露天拍賣), PChome Online Inc’s (網路家庭) consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online auction operator, has not given up its plan for an overseas listing, a company executive said yesterday, adding that the company would adopt artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to boost its competitiveness.
“We are going to present a more sophisticated IPO [initial public offering] proposal compared with the previous one in 2016... PChome chairman Jan [Hung-tze, 詹宏志] will make the announcement when the timing is right,” Ruten.com general manager Vicky Tseng (曾薰儀) told a news conference in Taipei.
The company at the beginning of 2016 disclosed a plan to list on the Hong Kong stock market to expand its presence in Asia, after announcing that its gross merchandise volume (GMV) exceeded NT$14 billion (US$479.34 million at the current exchange rate) for the first time in 2015.
Photo: CNA
GMV is a gauge indicating the total sales value for merchandise sold through an online marketplace over a certain period.
However, less than a year after its announcement, PChome said it was withdrawing Ruten.com’s IPO application from the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing in view of fast-changing industry dynamics.
PChome did not give further details on the withdrawal, but it is widely believed that it was prompted by rival Shopee Taiwan Co Ltd’s (樂購蝦皮) aggressive approach to gain local market share, forcing PChome to change its operating strategy.
While last year was a relatively “quiet” year for Ruten.com, as its GMV grew slower-than-normal at 15 percent to NT$27.52 billion, the company spent resources to collect trading data and develop AI solutions, Tseng said.
Starting this year, Ruten.com will provide its big data analysis and AI forecast solutions to individual merchants to help them carry out precision marketing, Tseng said, adding that the company would introduce AI chatbot to increase customer service efficiency.
The company plans to expand its reach from Taiwan to Southeast and Northeast Asian markets this year by introducing international trade services for clients starting next quarter, she added.
“The scale of Ruten.com’s marketplace is considerably a large platform in East Asia... We will make use of it to expand our services in the region,” Tseng said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to