AUTOMAKERS
Sanyang upbeat on sales
Automobile and motorcycle manufacturer Sanyang Motor Co Ltd (三陽工業) yesterday said that it is upbeat about sales this year and that it would add four Hyundai Motor Co cars to its offerings. Sales could increase 15 percent this year, Sanyang chairman Wu Chin-yuan (吳清源) said. Regarding Taiwan’s highly saturated car and motorcycle market, Wu said that the company would focus on customer service and strive to cut red tape to import the South Korean automaker’s latest models within a year of their global launches. Wu said that he is optimistic about customers’ reception of Hyundai’s newly revised sports utility vehicles.
AVIATION
Starlux hiring pilots
Starlux Airlines (星宇航空) yesterday said that it would hire 30 to 40 pilots who hold Republic of China citizenship. Qualified candidates for captain must have logged 3,500 flight hours and copilot candidates must have 1,000 flight hours. The newly established airline is set to take delivery of its first Airbus A321neo in October and start using A350 widebody aircraft in 2021. The airline said it would recruit foreign pilots at a later date.
TECHNOLOGY
GeneReach sales skyrocket
GeneReach Biotechnology Corp (瑞基海洋), which makes disease detection devices and reagents for pets, livestock and marine animals, yesterday said that sales last month rose 126 percent annually to NT$26.42 million (US$856,485). Sales in the first two months of this year rose 136 percent annually to NT$61.66 million, it said. The company attributed the gain to a surge in demand for pet testing and African swine fever testing in China, while demand has also risen across other neighboring markets.
BANKING
TBB could set payout record
State-run Taiwan Business Bank (TBB, 台灣企銀) could distribute its highest dividend payout in nearly two decades, following a significant increase in earnings last year. The payout could be NT$0.8 to NT$0.95 per share, better than the NT$0.668 it paid a year earlier. Any payout above NT$0.8 would be the highest since 2000, when it paid NT$1.0154 per share, company data showed. The lender last year saw net income rise 58.25 percent annually to NT$9.17 billion and earnings per share were NT$1.19, both record highs.
LOGISTICS
UPS begins U.S. Saturday pickup
United Parcel Service (UPS) yesterday said that Taiwan is on its list of 57 key markets for a newly launched Saturday pickup service for international shipments. The company is targeting imports from the US, which totaled US$28.7 billion in the first 10 months of last year. Expedited transit time from the new service would provide an opportunity for manufacturing production lines to start earlier and retailers to restock faster, UPS Taiwan managing director Sam Hung (洪毅) said.
CAMERA LENSES
Largan ends annual declines
Smartphone lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) yesterday said that sales last month fell 24 percent monthly and rose 14 percent annually to NT$2.53 billion, ending four months of annual declines. Sales in the first two months of this year totaled NT$5.89 billion, up 3 percent from a year earlier. Largan’s high-end 20 megapixel lenses accounted for 20 to 30 percent of sales and those above 10 megapixels made up 50 to 60 percent of sales, while 8 megapixel lenses contributed 10 to 20 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