TPK Holding Co Ltd (宸鴻) president and chief executive officer Chiang Hwai-hai (江懷海) is stepping down after 15 months in the roles, the maker of touch solutions said in a statement on Friday, adding that he is to be replaced by senior vice president Leo Hsieh (謝立群).
“TPK Holding Co Ltd today announced that its board of directors has appointed Mr Leo Hsieh as the new president and CEO after the resignation of former president and CEO Mr H.H. Chiang due to personal reasons,” the statement said.
TPK, a supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad products, said the personnel change would be effective from Dec. 1.
Hsieh joined TPK in 2015 and oversees the company’s largest business unit, touch modules. Prior to joining TPK, he worked at Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶), Nortel Networks Corp and Winfanet Systems Inc. After taking the helm at TPK, Hsieh, 55, would be its third president/CEO in four years.
TPK did not elaborate on Chiang’s departure, but local media on Saturday said changes among top executives at the firm in the past few years reflected increasing competition in the touch solutions industry.
Chiang arrived at TPK on Sept. 1 last year from being executive vice president and CEO of Jabil Green Point High Technology Co (捷普集團綠點高新科技) after his predecessor, Michael Chung (鍾依華), retired after three years in office.
Chiang helped the company post a turnaround last quarter with a net income of NT$160.66 million (US$5.2 million), compared with a net loss of NT$227.37 million in the previous quarter, although last quarter’s profit was still a substantial decline from the same period a year earlier, when the company earned NT$870.19 million.
In the first 10 months of the year, TPK’s cumulative revenue grew 4.37 percent annually to NT$88.1 billion.
The company said at an investors’ conference on Nov. 1 that revenue this quarter is likely to increase by 30 percent from last quarter’s NT$32.19 billion.
Operating margin is expected to improve by up to 0.5 percentage points from 0.62 percent, it said.
Shares in TPK fell 1.53 percent to NT$51.6 on Friday. So far this year, the stock has dropped 38.28 percent.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day