House price sales increase
The decline in Taipei’s existing-home prices over the past year led to an increase in the number of units sold last month, a real estate broker said.
The transaction volume of residential units increased as much as 50 percent last month from February in Taipei, said Stanley Su (蘇啟榮), senior researcher at Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋), Taiwan’s biggest property broker. Prices have fallen 15 percent since last April, he said.
“A correction in prices lured buyers back to the market,” Su said by telephone yesterday. “Some people have delayed purchases from last year.”
“Panic sentiment from the global financial tsunami has eased,” Su said.
Far Eastern sues Xia Yi
Far Eastern Transport Corp (遠東航空) filed criminal and civil suits against Xia Yi (夏怡), wife of former chairman Stephen Tsuei (崔湧), and seeks compensation from Xia, the Taipei-based airline said in an exchange statement yesterday.
Tsuei was indicted in August last year by Taiwan prosecutors on charges of alleged embezzlement, forgery and breach of trust that led to the collapse of the insolvent airline. He faces an 18-year jail term.
Cathay Financial reports income
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), Taiwan’s largest listed financial-services company, reported preliminary first-quarter net income of NT$4.98 billion (US$147.5 million), or NT$0.5 per share, the company said in an exchange filing yesterday.
The company had a loss of NT$5.98 billion, or a loss of NT$0.65 per share, a year earlier.
Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Taiwan’s third-largest listed financial services company, Thursday posted first-quarter profit of NT$3.91 billion, or NT$0.35 per share, the company said in another exchange filing, without providing comparative figures.
Meanwhile, Taishin Financial Holding Co’s (台新金控) net profit in the first quarter totaled NT$830 million, or NT$0.08 a share, the company said.
Compal shipments beat forecast
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest maker of notebook computers, posted first-quarter shipments that beat its own forecast.
Compal, which supplies laptops to companies including Hewlett-Packard Co, shipped 6.35 million notebooks in the three months to March 31, surpassing its own Feb. 25 estimate for 5.8 million to 6.2 million units, company spokesman Chang Chih-ming (張志銘) said in an e-mail yesterday.
Compal maintains its earlier forecast for 15 percent shipment growth this quarter from the prior three-month period, Chang said.
Unpaid workers get tax benefit
The Ministry of Finance said in a statement on Wednesday that the government would extend the tax payment deadline for workers who took unpaid leave.
The extension applies to workers taking unpaid leave in any two months from September last year to the end of this year, the ministry said.
Trend Micro unveils application
Trend Micro Inc (趨勢科技) yesterday introduced a free Smart Surfing application on Apple Inc’s iTunes application store for iPhone and iPod touch users.
The anti-virus company marked its foray into mobile computing by releasing a secure browser application that protects Internet users from malicious Web sites and prevents them from having their personal information stolen.
Trend Micro said its Smart Protection Network infrastructure used the cloud computing concept to process 5 billion uniform resource locators (URL) daily in order to provide the most up-to-the-minute Internet browsing protection.
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).
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