Qualcomm Inc yesterday broke ground on a complex in Hsinchu to house its first overseas Center for Operations, Manufacturing Engineering and Testing (COMET), fulfilling the US company’s promise of investing US$700 million in Taiwan to settle an antitrust lawsuit with the Fair Trade Commission.
The building would also house a 5G testing lab, a multimedia research and development center, and a mobile artificial intelligence enablement center, the San Diego, California-based chipmaker said in a statement released yesterday.
The creation of the centers means that “the collaboration between Qualcomm and Taiwan’s ICT [information and communications technology] industry has marked a new milestone,” Qualcomm senior vice president of manufacturing technology and operations Roawen Chen (陳若文) said in the statement.
Photo: Bloomberg
The building would accommodate 10,000 staff upon its completion within two years, the statement said.
The centers, which are worth NT$5.5 billion (US$176.8 million), would provide comprehensive 5G testing services from sub-6 gigahertz technology and millimeter-wave technology, the Hsinchu City Government said in a separate statement.
In November last year, Qualcomm said that COMET and the 5G center would make Taiwan second in the world after Silicon Valley in ability to test the cutting-edge technologies.
“The Fair Trade Commission is pleased to see Qualcomm’s move to the Hsinchu Science Park [新竹科學園區],” commission Chairperson Huang Mei-ying (黃美瑛) said in Qualcomm’s statement.
“This is an important step by Qualcomm in boosting investment in Taiwan,” Huang added. “The investment will have a positive effect on Taiwan’s semiconductor and ICT industries, and companies in the supply chain.”
Based on the settlement reached in August last year, Qualcomm would no longer be required to pay the remainder of a NT$23.4 billion fine, after having already paid NT$2.73 billion.
Qualcomm has 700 employees in Taiwan.
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
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation on the suspicious transaction analysis mechanism. This landmark agreement makes HSBC the first foreign bank in Taiwan to establish such a partnership with the High Prosecutors Office, underscoring its commitment to active anti-fraud initiatives, financial inclusion, and the “Treating Customers Fairly” principle. Through this deep public-private collaboration, both parties aim to co-create a secure financial ecosystem via early warning detection and precise fraud prevention technologies. At the signing ceremony, HSBC Taiwan CEO and head of banking Adam Chen (陳志堅)
RSS