Taiwan’s auto sales appear lackluster, despite the arrival of the year-end peak season.
Earlier this month, Kuozui Motors Ltd (國瑞汽車) issued a statement confirming that it in August adjusted its manufacturing capacity and reduced working days for certain production line workers, with the adjustment planned to continue through the end of this year.
Kuozui, a Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), Toyota Motor Corp and Hino Motors Ltd joint venture, assembles Toyota and Hino vehicles at factories in Taoyuan’s Jhongli (中壢) and Guanyin (觀音) districts, selling to domestic and overseas markets.
“Kuozui’s move suggests that the company expects the auto market’s year-end, peak-season performance to be bearish and sees no need to maintain its production momentum,” Capital Investment Management Corp (群益投顧) analyst David Lai (賴季宏) said in a note on Monday last week.
The nation’s new car sales during the first nine months of this year fell 1.4 percent to 322,084 units from the same period last year, Directorate-General of Highways data showed.
In August and September, 56,834 new cars were sold, down 16.36 percent from the same period last year, which showed that sales momentum in the domestic market had not recovered significantly after Ghost Month, which ran from Aug. 11 to Sept. 9 this year, Lai said.
Meanwhile, local automakers’ exports might also be affected by weakening demand abroad and fierce competition in global markets.
As an example, Lai said that Kuozui exports might drop this year as purchasing power in the Middle East has been affected by relatively low oil prices.
“In the long run, although Kuozui still receives export orders for Corolla Altis sedans from the Middle East, its export volume is estimated to decline by nearly 20 percent this year,” he said.
Capital Investment has forecast that the total number of vehicle sales in Taiwan this year will decrease 2.22 percent annually to 435,000 units, a downward revision from its previous estimate of 440,000 units, he said.
"Further observation shall be required on the US-China trade war and its impact on consumer confidence. At the moment, we hold a conservative view of the auto market’s performance for next year," Lai said.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts