The Taipei Cycle Show is being postponed from next month until May due to concerns over the 2019 novel coronavirus, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) said yesterday.
Last year’s trade show attracted about 7,000 potential foreign buyers, said the council, one of the event’s organizers.
The Taipei International Sporting Goods Show, planned to take place together with the Taipei Cycle Show, has also been postponed from next month to May 14 and 16, the council said.
The decision to reschedule the trade shows was made after the council consulted with health experts and studied data it had compiled, council president and CEO Walter Yeh (葉明水) told reporters, adding that the outbreak is likely to peak over the next month.
The decision was also taken to improve the nation’s efforts to prevent a local outbreak and safeguard the health of the shows’ exhibitors and visitors, the council said.
The postponement of the shows might cause many exhibitors to cancel plans to showcase their products in Taiwan this year, Yeh said.
However, firms that cancel due to the change in dates would be allowed to change their attendance to next year’s shows, Yeh added.
Due to concerns over the coronavirus, the number of exhibitors at the shows could plunge from an expected 3,800 participants to as low as 1,800, the council said.
Taiwan exported 1.82 million bicycles in the first 11 months of last year, down 0.97 percent from a year earlier, while exports rose 4.42 percent from a year earlier to about NT$41 billion (US$1.36 billion), Ministry of Economic Affairs data showed.
The higher sales value indicates that local bicycle makers produce many highly priced products such as mountain bikes, the ministry said.
Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) is one of the most famous local bicycle brands.
Bicycle component exports for the 11-month period increased 13.3 percent from 2018 to NT$37.2 billion, the ministry 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained