Players of the game app Fruit Ninja are now just a click and tap away from boosting Taiwanese farmers’ produce sales and income, a marketing company said yesterday.
“Working with a world-renowned, popular and free game app, we would like to use a new approach to help market local produce,” the Taipei-based CrossMedia Group said in a statement.
Players of Fruit Ninja, which has 700 million downloads worldwide, can now order all kinds of in-season produce directly from Taiwanese farmers, the company said.
The campaign involves an advertising banner on the app, visible only to players in Taiwan, that connects users to a Web site where they can order locally grown produce or have the chance to win a month’s supply of fruit and vegetables.
If the model proves successful, the company said it would duplicate it to market Taiwanese produce around the world.
CrossMedia Group marketing manager Shally Hou said the firm chose Fruit Ninja because the game’s theme fits the campaign, and because it has 700 million downloads.
In Taiwan alone, the game has 1.78 million downloads and 168,000 monthly active users, she said.
The company hopes that the model will help increase farmers’ incomes, Hou said, adding that the firm is working with 74 farmers and is looking to expand the network.
Most farmers only make about NT$22,000 a month, because the bulk of the revenue from sales of fruit and vegetables ends up in the pockets of middlemen, according to iLohas (愛樂活), a Taiwanese social enterprise that helps farmers and is involved in the project.
Baggio Chang (張佑輔), co-founder of iLohas, said that directly buying produce from farmers could triple their revenues.
“We welcome all kinds of approaches to help local farmers and look forward to good results,” he said.
Fruit Ninja developer HalfBrick Studios of Australia also expressed excitement over the cause, saying that it would give out free Fruit Ninja-themed souvenirs to those who place orders.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI