Government targets conventions
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said yesterday that the government would improve Taiwan’s convention and exhibition facilities to develop the nation into a regional convention and exhibition hub.
Shih said the convention and exhibition industry is symbolic of national progress, and Taiwan would compete with Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in this respect.
With Taiwan becoming a major hub in the East Asian region following the normalization of cross-strait relations and the launch of direct air and shipping links with China, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has listed the convention and exhibition business as one of the nation’s strategic industries, Shih said.
In line with this policy, the second phase of the Nangang Exhibition Hall project will begin soon and the tender process for the Kaohsiung convention and exhibition center project is also underway, he said.
Samsung, Acer team with AT&T
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and Acer Inc (宏碁) are teaming up with US telecoms giant AT&T Inc to introduce low-priced netbook computers for the holiday shopping season.
AT&T said the Samsung Go and Acer Aspire One, both of which run Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7, will cost US$199 after a mail-in rebate and with the purchase of a two-year AT&T data service contract.
Taiwanese firms like HK
Taiwanese companies have set up a total of 138 regional offices in Hong Kong as of June 1 — the world’s fourth-biggest in terms of presence after their US counterparts at 526, Japanese companies at 447 and UK companies at 213, showed the latest statistics from InvestHK, a department under the territory’s Foreign Direct Investment.
Nineteen Taiwanese companies have located their regional headquarters in Hong Kong, while another 154 companies have set up local offices there, the investment service department said in a press statement on Monday.
“It showed that Taiwan companies have already globalized and connected to the world economy,” the statement said.
It said that in total Hong Kong was home to 1,252 regional headquarters, 2,328 regional offices and 2,817 local offices to companies from around the world.
Despite a 3.3 percent year-on-year drop in the number of regional offices of foreign companies, the headcount of employees hired by these companies grew from 109 last year to 114, InvestHK director-general Simon Galpin said in the statement.
Semiconductors to advance
Global semiconductor sales will probably rise more than expected next year, said chip industry association WSTS Inc, and may return to pre-recession levels, research firm Gartner Inc said.
Chip sales may increase 12.2 percent to US$246.9 billion next year, beating a June estimate of 7.3 percent growth, WSTS said in a statement. Gartner predicts worldwide semiconductor revenue will advance 13 percent to US$255 billion next year, the same level as in last year, a release from the research firm showed.
WSTS predicts semiconductor revenue will fall 11.5 percent to US$220.1 billion this year, while Gartner forecasts an 11.4 drop to US$226 billion. Memory-chip sales may rise 18.6 percent to US$50.9 billion next year, WSTS said.
“The revenue forecast for the commodity memory market — DRAM and NAND flash — has improved because of the stronger demand outlook, which means that pricing has strengthened more than previously forecast,” Bryan Lewis, a research vice president at Gartner, said in the statement.
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of