Thirty local firms made this year’s Global Innovation 1000 study — one fewer than last year — as global firms assign more importance to research and development (R&D) to stay competitive and profitable, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) said in a report on Tuesday.
R&D spending totaled NT$444.3 billion (US$14.45 billion) in Taiwan, a 0.2 percent increase from last year, which accounted for 3.3 percent of their combined revenue, PwC Taiwan said.
The growth lags far behind an 11.4 percent increase for the world’s top 1,000 companies, which spent a record US$782 billion on R&D this year, PwC Taiwan executive vice president Paul Liu (劉鏡清) said.
Revenues for the 1,000 firms also grew 11.4 percent annually, even though the newest figures left R&D intensity, or innovation spending as a percentage of revenue, unchanged at 4.5 percent from last year, the annual survey said.
However, the 88 high-leverage innovators saw their sales advancing 2.6 times as fast as the pool, while their market value soared 2.9 times higher, it said.
Local firms Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Pegatron Corp (和碩), Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業) and Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) were recognized as high-leverage innovators, the survey said.
With regard to R&D spending, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) leads the pack in Taiwan, followed by TSMC, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), it said.
R&D spending by the top 20 companies reached US$214.5 billion, accounting for 27.4 percent of the total, the survey said.
For the second year in a row, Amazon.com Inc led the top-20 list with R&D expenditure of US$22.6 billion, up a massive 40.6 percent from last year, it found. Alphabet Inc was second, spending US$16.2 billion.
Facebook Inc posted the biggest climb on the top-20 list, up six places from its position last year to No. 14, it said.
All surveyed regions increased their R&D expenditure, with China staging the biggest increase of 34 percent, followed by Europe’s 14 percent gain and North America’s 7.8 percent increase, the survey said.
R&D spending rose in the computing and electronics, healthcare, auto, and software and Internet — the four industries that dominate the top 20 list, it said.
The survey observed a US$13 billion R&D surge in spending in computing and electronics, from flat spending over the previous five years, almost a third of which was attributable to increased spending at Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
RSS