■ Foreign exchange reserves fall
Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves totaled US$256.98 billion at the end of last month, down from a figure of US$257.30 billion at the end of January, the nation's central bank said yesterday. While there was a net inflow of foreign capital last month, domestic investors sent capital out of Taiwan surpassing the foreign capital net inflow, the bank said. ■ Taiwan investment in PRC up
Taiwan has approved a total of US$411.62 million worth of China-bound investment applications this year, including six mainland-bound investment applications valued US$96.01 million that it approved on Thursday, according to the Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The commission said it gave the greenlight to US$322.88 million worth of nine inbound investment applications as of Thursday, among them US$255.44 million were approved in the first two months, a 2.4 percent rise from a year earlier.
■ Cellphone prospects look good
Taiwan's cellphone output is anticipated to grow by 100 percent this year due to booming global demand, according to a report by the Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心). This year, Taiwan's cellphone output is expected to hit 153 million units, up 99.7 percent from last year. Taiwan's cellphones' world market share will reach 18 percent, up from 10 percent last year, MIC said.
■ NT dollar falls
The NT dollar fell NT$0.091 against the US dollar yesterday, to close at NT$32.401 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$1.12 billion.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
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Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
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