■ UMC makes gains
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest contract chipmaker by revenue, said yesterday its revenue for last month rose to NT$8.46 billion (US$269.07 million), up 32.9 percent from the same month last year. The company posted revenue of NT$6.37 billion for April last year. UMC supplies semiconductor chips to several of the biggest companies in the global high-tech sector for use in a variety of products, including desktop computers, notebooks, mobile phones and digital cameras. For the four months ended April 30, UMC reported revenue of NT$32.85 billion (US$1.04 billion), 23.2 percent higher than the NT$26.65 billion in the same period last year, according to a statement on its Web site. UMC's revenue for last month was also up compared to the NT$8.455 billion posted for March.
■ Tsann Kuen trading to resume
Shares of Tsann Kuen Group (燦坤實業) will resume normal trading on the local bourse starting tomorrow, after the nation's largest home appliance and consumer electronics retailer chain passed the auditing of its financial report for last year, the Taiwan Stock Exchange said yesterday. Tsann Kuen's shares were restricted to cash transactions only since last Friday as its certified public accountant (CPA) issued a "qualified opinion" in its annual audit report for last year. Tsann Kuen said it had obtained an "unqualified opinion" for the report on Monday after its CPA in China completed auditing its results. Shares of Tsann Kuen rebounded by the 7 percent daily limit to close at NT$44.6 (US$1.42) yesterday.
■ Pre-tax revenues up
The nation's listed companies grew richer, as the combined first-quarter pre-tax income of the firms publicly traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange increased by NT$63.3 billion (US$2 billion), or 31.57 percent, from a year ago, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. Companies traded on the GRETAI Securities Market saw their pre-tax income increase by NT$9.4 billion, or 117.50 percent, over the same period, the statistics showed. Five of the nation's 1,206 listed companies failed to report their financial results for last year and the first quarter of this year by the deadline, including power transformer maker Potrans Electrical Corp (鴻運電子) and telecom software system provider Dinttap International Corp (鼎太國際), the commission said. These companies will be fined between NT$240,000 and NT$2.4 million and face a new deadline, the commission said. Trading of these companies' shares will also be suspended until their financial reports are completed, it added.
■ Dopod backs brand
Dopod International Corp (多普達), which sells mobile phones made by High Tech Computer Corp (宏達電), said late on Monday that it has hired former BenQ Corp (明基) executive Scott Huang (黃思齊) as its new marketing communication director in a bid to boost the company's brand business in the Asia-Pacific market. opod obtained Beijing's approval early this year to sell mobile phones in China. efore joining BenQ, Huang served in high-ranking positions at Nokia Ojy's local branch and local digital camera brand Him Technology Inc (華研).
■ NT dollar declines
The NT dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.117 to close at NT$31.497. total of US$1.03 billion changed hands during the day's trading.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
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