Priced at just US$499, XYZprinting Inc’s (三緯) new 3D printer, the da Vinci 1.0, caused a stir at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, wowing the editors of Reviewed.com, who selected it for an Editor’s Choice Award.
The firm’s entry-level 3D printer beat out 27 other products to earn the endorsement from the Web site, which presented the awards in partnership with show organizer the Consumer Electronics Association.
Judges praised the da Vinci 1.0 as an “affordable and approachable 3D printing” device, comparing it to products from other brands that use the same fused filament fabrication (FFF) technology, but generally cost more than US$1,400.
XYZprinting, a unit of Taiwanese electronics conglomerate Kinpo Group (金仁寶集團), is scheduled to start shipping its da Vinci 1.0 printers to China this month, with the product to debut in Japan and the US next month, and in Europe in March, chairman Simon Shen (沈軾榮) said last month.
The company has set a 100,000-unit global sales target for printers for this year and 1 million over the next three years, Shen said.
Last year, there were only a handful of 3D printing companies at the CES gadget expo, but this year, there were 30 and there would have been more if organizers had not turned others away because they could not fit them in.
The 3D printing area of the show floor drew dense crowds that gawked at the devices and their creations, which ranged from toys to tea cups to cases for Apple Inc’s iPhones.
With 3D printing, “we’re moving to a world of mass customization,” Consumer Electronics Association analys Shawn Dubravac said.
What started with custom-printed T-shirts in the style of CafePress can now happen in all kinds of industries, he said, but added that it is still a small field and he expects that just fewer than 100,000 3D printers will be sold this year.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS