Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技), the nation’s top game developer by sales, yesterday said it may achieve record revenue this year as the company plans to roll out 20 new smartphone games.
Royalties paid by Chinese partners may also help boost the company’s revenue this year to exceed last year’s NT$11.01 billion (US$363.74 million), Soft-World International chief financial officer Chung Hsing-po (鍾興博) told an investors’ conference.
“Smartphone games will be our priorities this year,” Chung said.
“While the traditional video-gaming market will remain, the growth potential in the mobile-game market is considerable in the next three to five years because of the growing penetration of smartphones,” he added.
Soft-World’s smartphone game sales contributed more than 50 percent of the firm’s total sales last quarter, up from a 10 percent share a year ago, Chung said.
In October last year, the company signed a contract with Japan’s Line Corp to sell game credits for its mobile game apps, which helped boost the company’s sales to NT$1.01 billion in November last year.
As of February, Soft-World’s “MyCard” game credit card had been widely used by more than 400 game developers globally, including Japan’s Line and the US’ online social networking company Facebook Inc, he said.
In February, the company saw sales expand 41.45 percent year-on-year to NT$1.4 billion, and Chung said the rising sales of game credits would allow the company to see monthly sales stay above the NT$1 billion level throughout this year.
Meanwhile, in a bid to grow sales, Soft-World from this year will start licensing its intellectual property (IP), particularly those used to develop mobile-game products, to industry partners, Chung said.
Soft-World is able to collect at least 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million) in royalties from its industry partners per case, Chung said, adding that the company had reached deals with two Chinese rivals for its IP license.
Due to expansion in sales, Soft-World’s net profit is estimated to exceed last year’s NT$369 million, with earnings per share higher than the NT$3.01 last year, he added.
Soft-World shares closed up 6.7 percent at NT$106 in Taipei trading yesterday, while the benchmark TAIEX gained 0.36 percent.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
RSS