VIRTUAL REALITY
StarVR cancels share sale
Acer Inc’s (宏碁) virtual reality (VR) venture has dropped a plan to raise NT$540 million (US$17.65 million) through the issuance of 6 million new shares, a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing released on Friday showed. StarVR Corp (宏星技術) does not think it needs to raise funds after considering its operational and financial conditions, as well as the current capital market, Acer said. StarVR is to focus in the short term on the high-end commercial market of the VR gear segment, after deploying some of its gear in gaming zones at theme parks and shopping malls, said Acer, which holds a 63.25 percent stake in the company.
MANUFACTURING
Business mood weakens
The manufacturing sector showed weakening business sentiment last month at a time of lingering trade friction between the US and China, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) said on Friday. The downbeat mood also reflected slower sales of smartphones and chips used for cryptocurrency mining, the institute said. The composite index for the sector fell 0.95 points from a month earlier to 100.52, it said.
INTERNET
Oath to set up R&D in Taiwan
Oath Inc, which owns digital content subdivisions AOL and Yahoo, on Friday announced that it would set up a research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan. The center would set trends for new products, optimize the user experience locally, and connect local and global markets, Oath media engineering department vice president Kelly Hirano said. The firm is expected to recruit about 100 artificial intelligence engineers, programmers, product designers and product managers this quarter.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
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