INVESTMENT
FDI hits record first quarter
The total value of approved investment projects by Taiwanese expatriates and foreign investors grew 105.43 percent year-on-year to US$2.25 billion in the first quarter, the highest January-to-March figures in 10 years, the Investment Commission said on Friday last week. Commission spokesperson Yang Shu-ling (楊淑玲) said the approved foreign direct investments (FDI) include Itochu Corp buying shares in Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓) for US$665 million, German-based Allianz SE increasing its investment in Allianz Taiwan Life Insurance Co (安聯人壽) to US$600 million and wind farm investments.
TRADE
Firms to save with tariff deal
Nicaragua’s removal of tariffs on three types of industrial products from Taiwan — paper or paperboard labels of all kinds, rubber or plastic footwear, and metal furniture — went into effect yesterday, which could save Taiwanese businesses a grand total of US$57,218 per year, an estimate by the Customs Administration found. The expansion of benefits under a decade-old bilateral free-trade agreement was implemented in Taiwan and Nicaragua earlier this year, the Bureau of Foreign Trade said on Friday last week.
ELECTRONICS
P20 Pro lands in Taiwan
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) on Thursday last week launched the P20 Pro in Taiwan. It is the world’s first smartphone to have three cameras and is touted as a game changer in mobile photography. Xunwei Technologies Co (訊崴), Huawei’s exclusive distributor in Taiwan, said that the P20 Pro accumulated preorders totaling about 100 million yuan (US$15.88 million) just 10 seconds after its Web site went live in China.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
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