Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械), the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer, said yesterday the shopping rush for bicycles in some quake-affected areas in Japan will strain the supply of bicycles on the market.
Media reports have said bicycles were sold out in some disaster areas in Japan, including Tokyo.
“The earthquake will definitely increase demand for bicycles for a period of time, but it will also lead to supply problems,” Giant Manufacturing chairman King Liu (劉金標) said on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Taipei International Cycle Show, which will run through Saturday at the Taipei World Trade Center’s Nangang Exhibition Hall.
Photo: Reuters
“The temporary demand is not good for the whole industry and our company because we have operated with the expectation of a balance between the market supply and demand,” he said.
Although Giant is taking emergency measures to increase the bicycle supply to Japan, the company still faces difficulties meeting the heightened demand, Liu said.
Giant sells 1 million bicycles to Japan a year, representing roughly 10 percent of Japan’s annual import of bicycles, he said.
Japan is the fifth-largest export destination for Taiwanese bicycles, accounting for 5.36 percent of exports last year, behind the US (21.45 percent), the Netherlands (13.05 percent), Britain (12.73 percent) and Germany (8.41 percent).
Last year, shipments of Taiwan’s assembled bicycles rose 17.87 percent to 5.07 million units from the previous year, with total revenue growing 20.24 percent to NT$44.25 billion (US$1.5 billion), according to the Bureau of Foreign Trade.
STEADY: Prices are to rebound following inventory rebuilding demand, TrendForce said, with Samsung Electronics Co further trimming capacity as it slashes DDR4 lines The contract prices of DRAM chips are to rise by as much as 18 percent sequentially this quarter — the first price upticks in about eight quarters — driven mainly by inventory rebuilding demand for DRAM chips used in mobile devices and PCs, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) projected yesterday. The price rebound is led by a quarterly increase of mobile DRAM chips, which are to climb between 13 percent and 18 percent quarter-on-quarter this quarter, which has not been seen since the fourth quarter of 2021, the Taipei-based market researcher predicted. Likewise, the price of mainstream PC DDR4 DRAM is expected to bounce
SOLID FOUNDATION: Given its decades of expertise in megatronics, manufacturing and robotics, Japan has the wherewithal to create its own AI, Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp plans to help build an artificial intelligence (AI) tech-related ecosystem in Japan to meet demand in a country eager to gain an edge in this emerging technology. The US company will seek to partner with Japanese research organizations, companies and start-ups to build factories for AI, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday during opening remarks in a meeting with Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura. The company is to set up an AI research laboratory, and invest in local start-ups and educate the public on using AI, Huang said. Huang earlier this week met with Japanese Prime
A Hong Kong court postponed a court hearing on troubled Chinese property developer Evergrande Group’s (恆大集團) winding-up petition scheduled for yesterday until Jan. 29. Evergrande is trying to win support from its creditors for a plan to restructure more than US$300 billion in debt to stave off liquidation. The company’s lawyer told the court it was requesting an adjournment to “refine” its new debt restructuring plan. The Hong Kong High Court has postponed the hearing over Evergrande’s potential liquidation several times. Judge Linda Chan (陳靜芬) had said in October that yesterday’s hearing would be the last before a decision is handed down. Chan
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) is among a field of “very formidable” competitors to Nvidia Corp in the race to produce the best artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday. Huawei, Intel Corp and an expanding group of semiconductor start-ups pose a stiff challenge to Nvidia’s dominant position in the market for AI accelerators, Huang told reporters in Singapore. Shenzhen-based Huawei has grown into China’s chip tech champion and returned to the spotlight this year with an advanced made-in-China smartphone processor. “We have a lot of competitors, in China and outside China,” Huang said. “Most of our competitors
RSS