Despite Taiwan’s economic slowdown in recent years, its wine market remains robust, showing growth in the area of high-priced collector wines, industry experts said on Saturday.
Demand for wine has grown steadily over the past five years, with high-grade wines being the main drivers, a report posted on iCheers (愛酒窩), the nation’s largest online seller of grape wines, said.
According to Bureau of Foreign Trade data for the first 10 months of last year, the average unit cost of wine imports was apparently higher than in the same period of 2012, with the average unit cost of “still wine” growing 11 percent, while consumption of high-priced, high-quality grape wines also rose significantly.
A iCheers sales report last year showed that the average price of grape wine sold on the website surged to NT$800 to NT$1,200 per bottle in last year from less than NT$800 in 2012, and has jumped to about NT$1,500 per bottle this year.
Overall, iCheers’ business turnover grew nearly 40 percent over the past year, the report said.
iCheers chief editor Pan Yun-chih (潘芸芝) said that the Web site has 3,000 types of wines on offer, compared with fewer than 800 in 2012.
The price range has also expanded, and is now NT$500 to NT$10,000, he said.
In addition, per capita spending has increased significantly, which shows that consumers are more willing to buy high-priced wines, Pan said.
The Web site’s marketing manager, Lin Hsiao-hsun (林孝恂), said Taiwan’s grape wine market is more mature than many other Asian countries’ and local consumers are more open to trying new products.
Compared with consumers in Hong Kong and China who still favor Bordeaux, Taiwan’s consumers are enthusiastic about fine quality wines from Spain, Italy and other countries, he said.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
STABLE RESULTS: Despite June’s lower consolidated revenue, second-quarter sales still reached a record high, driven by demand for chips for AI applications Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales of NT$263.71 billion (US$9.02 billion) for last month, its second-lowest monthly result this year. The world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement that its revenue last month only fared better than the NT$260.01 billion posted in February. Last month’s figure rose 26.9 percent from a year earlier, but slumped 17.7 percent from May, the company said. However, second-quarter revenue reached NT$933.8 billion, a record high for a single quarter, company data showed. The figure represented growth of 11.26 percent from the first quarter and 38.6 percent from a year earlier. Previously, TSMC said that
RSS