Industrial output to keep rising
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday that with more new handheld devices hitting the global markets, the nation’s industrial production is expected to continue to report a year-on-year increase for last month.
The ministry said last month could be the fourth consecutive month for the local industrial production index to post year-on-year growth after April’s 4.8 percent rise, March’s 3.16 percent increase and February’s 6.83 percent growth.
The ministry, which is scheduled to release last month’s industrial production data today, said production output of the local manufacturing sector is expected to continue its momentum in the second quarter of this year from the previous three quarters.
Drop in Chinese investment
Only 50 investment projects proposed by businesses from China were approved by the government in the first five months of the year, marking a year-on-year drop of 10.7 percent, the economics ministry said on Friday, blaming the decrease on the stalled cross-strait service trade agreement.
In terms of the value of the investment projects, the total amount to be invested amounted to US$141.56 million, which represented a year-on-year drop of 33.36 percent, according to statistics released by the Investment Commission.
The statistics also showed that in the first five months, 164 China-bound investment plans proposed by Taiwanese businesses were approved by the government, down 9.39 percent from the same period last year.
The accumulated value of the projects stood at US$4.28 billion, down 1.76 percent, according to the tallies.
Demand for electronics to grow
The global market for consumer electronics and components is expected to grow over the next 10 years amid the trend of the “Internet of Things,” — connecting more devices to the Internet and to each other, according to local market researcher Topology Research Institute (拓墣產研).
The consumer electronics and components market could reach US$1.34 trillion worldwide this year, and the market is likely to grow by 5 to 10 percent each year until 2020, the institute said in a research note on Friday.
The industry is likely to generate business of about US$2 trillion by 2020, Topology researcher Simon Yang (楊勝帆) said.
Yang forecast that the annual growth of the global market of consumer electronics and components will grow between 10 to 20 percent each year after 2020.
The output of the global consumer electronics industry might reach US$3 trillion by 2024, Yang added.
Shipments of handset panels up
Global shipments of high-definition panels for cellphones for the first quarter this year bucked the downturn of all cellphone display shipments to report an almost 30 percent sequential increase, according to the US-headquartered advisory firm DisplaySearch.
In a research report, the firm said about 67 million HD cellphone displays were shipped worldwide during the first quarter, up 27 percent from the fourth quarter of last year.
Global shipments of full HD cellphone screens grew even more significantly, up from 32 percent in the fourth quarter and reaching 57 million units, DispaySearch said.
During the first quarter, Samsung Electronics Co of South Korea retained the title as the largest cellphone screen supplier in the world with 48 million units shipped, ahead of China’s BOE Technology Group Co (京東方) with 44.1 million units shipped and Japan’s Sharp Corp with 42 million shipped, DisplaySearch said.
German businesses optimistic
More than half of the German companies operating in Taiwan are increasingly optimistic about their business outlook, according to the results of a survey released by the German Trade Office Taipei.
The survey, conducted among 248 companies in Taiwan from May 12 to June 6, indicated that 66 percent of the companies expect to see increasing revenues this year and 40 percent expect increasing profits.
In addition, about 25 percent of the companies polled said that they plan investments at new locations within the next two years, according to the survey.
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