BenQ Corp (
The announcement came almost two months after the Taipei-based company stopped funding the unprofitable German handset business it acquired from Siemens AG. The staff reduction will start this week and will be completed by the end of next month, said Eric Yu (游克用), chief financial officer at BenQ.
The Shanghai factory is part of the assets BenQ received after it acquired Siemens' cellphone business in October last year. The German subsidiary filed for bankruptcy protection and said it may cut as many as two-thirds of its 3,050 jobs in the country after BenQ stopped funding the unit.
The Shanghai job cuts are aimed at "adjusting the company's handset manufacturing capacity" after the halt in funding for the German unit, Yu said. BenQ said on Nov. 6 its consolidated sales last month fell 44 percent from a year earlier as it stopped combining the revenue from the division in Europe.
Shares in BenQ fell 0.3 percent to close at NT$17.05 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The stock has slumped 46 percent this year, compared with an 11.6 percent gain in the benchmark TAIEX index.
Yu declined to give details on how much the staff cuts will cost the company or how they will affect production. Annual production capacity at BenQ's Shanghai plant will be reduced to 10 million handsets, the Taipei-based Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, without providing comparative figures.
BenQ on Oct. 25 posted a third-quarter loss of NT$12.2 billion (US$367 million), its biggest loss in five years, because of the writedown of the German unit. The Taiwanese company said at the time that a total of 18 subsidiaries in Europe and Latin America -- all related to the German unit -- were reviewing their financial positions.
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
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
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
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).
RSS