Bicycle maker Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) yesterday said that it is likely to expand its YouBike public bicycle rental system to Changhua County, Greater Taichung and New Taipei City.
The company has signed a contract with the Changhua County Government to launch the cycle sharing system there, which would make the county the second place in Taiwan to offer the service, Giant chief executive Anthony Lo (羅祥安) told reporters yesterday.
The Greater Taichung City Council is in the process of deciding whether to install the system there too, he added.
Photo: Yang Ya-min, Taipei Times
In New Taipei City, the company has set up trial systems in Xindian (新店) and Xizhi (汐止) districts that connect with the cycle network in Taipei, Lo said, adding that the New Taipei City Government will decide whether to increase the number of rental sites based on the results of the trials.
Giant also plans to install an additional 173 YouBike rental sites and put 5,030 bicycles in circulation in Taipei by the end of the first half of next year, Lo said.
Lo said the company expects its service in the capital to break even next year.
According to Lo, the service is easier to operate in cities with large populations and many commuters, such as Taipei, London, Paris and New York.
However, Lo said that Taipei’s cycling infrastructure can still be improved.
Citing Canadian bicycle sharing system BIXI’s bankruptcy filing in January, Lo said that such services are not likely to generate much profit for the company operating them because rental fees have to be kept low enough for the general public to be able to access the service.
Despite the low profitability of public cycle networks, Giant’s Taipei sales still rose after it launched the YouBike system there.
According to the company, each of the system’s bikes costs about NT$10,000 (US$330) because they are designed to withstand frequent use.
The bicycles are built to be used 13 times a day on average, much more often than the twice a day use that most other bicycles average, the company said.
Giant expects to post 5 to 10 percent revenue growth this year, eyeing better weather around the world and a stronger global economy, Lo said.
He added that the company forecasts sales to China to grow by 10 percent this year, while the average selling price of its products is expected to remain at about US$300 per unit.
Last year, the company posted revenue of NT$54.32 billion, up 0.36 percent from NT$54.13 billion a year ago, according to its filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Giant distributed 6.31 million bicycles worldwide last year for an annual rise of 1.5 percent, Lo said.
Last year, the company shipped 2.4 million bicycles to China, up from approximately 2 million a year earlier, he said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by