■ Boom to continue
The boom in Taiwan's property market is expected to continue throughout the year on the back of the country's economic recovery and relatively low levels of interest rates, said Victor Chang (張欣民), a manager at Sinyi Realty Estate Inc (信義房屋) yesterday.
Taiwan's property market peaked in 1989 as the weighted index of the Taiwan Stock Exchange breached a record high of 12,000 points. Property prices hit the bottom in 2001, and since then prices have become firmer.
"But the upward trend could hardly be felt until the second half of 2003," Chang said.
In the Taipei area, the prices of second-hand houses have risen some 7.0 percent since 2001, according to Sinyi Realty's statistics.
Chang made the remarks after Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰 人壽) beat rival Shinkong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) in acquiring a plot of public land for NT$8.2 billion yesterday.
■ IBM announces strategy
IBM Taiwan Corp's software group announced yesterday that this year's development strategy would evolve into specialty orientation by reshuffling its five original software brands.
"This is a move of most significance following IBM's decision to withdraw from software application domain and focus on the middleware realm in 1999," said Timothy Ding (丁瑞麟), IBM Tai-wan's software group executive.
The "middle ware" refers to IBM's five software brands -- DB2, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli and WebSphere. The company's new strategy is to pay less attention on these brands but on their specialities -- such as business integration, business intelligence, content management, portal/on demand workplace, data center automation, development tool, pervasive computing, security, storage, Linux and competitive winback.
Among which, Linux is an important specialty as many governments have adopted the technology to build platform for their information infrastructure with IBM's help.
IBM Taiwan also won several government procurement projects under E-Tawian program to build paperless environment and establish the advanced information infrastructure in transportation, household registry and military service affairs, the company said.
■ China ready to compete
China Steel Corp (中鋼) said day that it will strive to produce superior products to counter increased competition from Chinese steel manufacturers.
China has often been referred to as the "world's factory for manufacturing" and its steel-producing sector has seen rapid increased growth in its production capacity.
Although China Steel in Taiwan is enjoying good profits at the moment, company officials acknowledge that world steel prices are bound to move toward more cutthroat competition and China Steel is expecting this to adversely affect profits, company officials said.
"We have to look for other ways to boost our revenues," the officials added.
China Steel is planning to increase research and development, the officials said, hoping that the high-value added products will find a niche in the ever-more competitive global market.
In addition, China Steel must also expand the production capacity of its higher quality goods, they said, as well as establish a marketing network for these products, especially in downstream industries. The company will also have to tap other markets, including China, in the future.
■ NT dollar holds steady
The New Taiwan dollar maintained its strength against its US counterpart, advancing NT$0.020 to close at NT$33.129 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$1.48 billion.
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
When she was in fifth grade, Scarlett Goddard Strahan started to worry about getting wrinkles. By the time she turned 10, she and her friends were spending hours on ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube watching influencers tout products for achieving today’s beauty aesthetic: a dewy, “glowy,” flawless complexion. Goddard Strahan developed an elaborate skin care routine with facial cleansers, mists, hydrating masks and moisturizers. One night, her skin began to burn intensely and erupted in blisters. Heavy use of adult-strength products had wreaked havoc on her skin. Months later, patches of tiny bumps remain on her face, and her cheeks turn
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
RSS