The arrest of Huawei Technology Co (華為) chief financial officer Meng Wangzhou (孟晚舟) in Canada has stoked fears of potential risks for Taiwanese companies in Huawei’s supply chain should the incident unravel a ceasefire in the US-China trade war, Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) said yesterday.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei (任正非), was arrested on Dec. 1 in Vancouver on an extradition warrant issued by the US on allegations that Huawei tried to evade US sanctions on Iran.
The incident could lead to the US banning imports of Huawei products or stricter restrictions on US manufacturers to limit the sale of key components to the Chinese company as was the case with telecommunications equipment supplier ZTE Inc (中興) earlier this year, Jih Sun said in a report.
US technology heavyweights, including Qualcomm Inc, Intel Corp, Broadcom Inc and Micron Technology Inc, supply chips to Huawei, which was last year the world’s No. 5 chip consumer, according to Gartner Inc, Jih Sun said.
Although Huawei has other sources, supply can be scant and might affect its operations and indirectly disrupt its supply chain in Taiwan, Jih Sun said.
Huawei sold more than half of its products to Chinese companies and generated only 6 percent of its revenue in the US, Jih Sun said.
The company has 2,000 suppliers worldwide, with many of them in Taiwan, it added.
“The impact on Taiwan’s supply chain would be more severe if US businesses were barred from supplying electronic components to the Chinese firm,” the report said. “Largan Precision Co (大立光) and Universal Microwave Technology Inc (昇達科技) might see a greater impact, given their bigger revenue exposure.”
Huawei, which is also the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker with a 10 percent market share, accounted for about 15 percent of revenue at Largan, which supplies camera lenses to the Chinese company, Jih Sun said.
About 20 percent of Universal Microwave’s revenue came from Huawei, which buys its telecommunications components, Jih Sun said.
Taiwanese chip designers, such as MediaTek Inc (聯發科), foundry company Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), thermo module maker Asia Vital Components Co (奇鋐) and printed-circuit board manufacturer Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興) all supply products to Huawei, although they have smaller exposures, with revenue contribution of less than 5 or 10 percent, Jih Sun 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
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