United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest contract chipmaker, yesterday reported record-high sales last year on the back of strong global demand for consumer electronics.
Riding on the wave of the global foundry industry’s recovery, UMC saw sales of NT$120.43 billion (US$4.1 billion), up 35.9 percent from a year ago, the firm said.
However, sales in the fourth quarter fell 4.08 percent from the previous quarter to NT$31.32 billion as a rising NT dollar affected its competitiveness.
Last month, UMC recorded NT$10.18 billion in revenue, down 2.5 percent from November, the lowest level since the NT$10.09 billion posted in May 2009, the company said.
In the last three months of last year, the NT dollar rose by 5.4 percent against the US dollar.
The local currency has continued to climb despite intervention by the central bank to slow its appreciation.
Horizon Securities (宏遠證券) analyst Benson Huang said the impact of the rising NT dollar was widely expected.
However, foundry giants like UMC and its bigger rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), need to renegotiate with their clients on pricing for new supply contracts because of the impact of the currency appreciation, he said.
“I am not particularly worried about UMC’s sales, because the foundry business is expected to benefit from growing demand for new tech gadgets, in particular tablet computers,” Huang said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six