US lowers Motech tariff
The US Department of Commerce has cut the import tariff on Motech Industries Inc’s (茂迪) solar cells to 20.86 percent from the 44.18 percent originally proposed, the firm said in a statement submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange before the market opened.
The downward revision makes the levy on Motech the lowest among Taiwanese solar cell makers, which the US subjects to an anti-dumping tax of between 27.59 and 35.89 percent. The new rate meets the expectations Motech voiced last week.
Motech shares rallied 6.97 percent to close at NT$37.6 yesterday in Taipei trading.
SPIL to buy ProMOS factory
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), the world’s third-largest chip packager and tester, yesterday said it has inked an agreement with ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) to buy 12-inch chip manufacturing equipment and facilities for NT$6.4 billion (US$213 million).
ProMOS said it plans to use the proceeds of the sale of its factory in Greater Taichung to fund restructuring projects.
SPIL has raised its capital spending for a second time this year to a record high of NT$18 billion to cope with ballooning customer demand.
Yahoo to expand native ads
Yahoo Inc on Monday said its Taiwanese native advertising service will likely be expanded, since the new marketing concept has attracted many brand-name customers, such as Swedish furniture retailer IKEA Group, Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Ltd and South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co, by helping them cut costs.
Native advertising aims to let publishers and advertisers deliver paid ads that are conducive to a Web page’s content, assimilated into its design and consistent with the platform’s behavior so the viewer feels the ad belongs there.
Phone shipments to grow
Worldwide shipments of smartphones are to continue growing in the third quarter of the year, spurred by the release of Chinese handsets and Apple Inc’s new iPhone later this year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Monday.
TrendForce forecast in a note that 322 million smartphones would be shipped in the third quarter, up 13 percent from the second quarter, pushing whole-year shipments to 1.2 billion units — an annual rise of 29.2 percent.
The market researcher predicted Apple would sell 75 million new 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones this year.
HTC reveals Butterfly 2
HTC Corp (宏達電) unveiled the newest smartphone in its popular Butterfly series in Tokyo yesterday, saying the device is to go on sale in Taiwan and other Asian markets next month.
The HTC Butterfly 2 is to be available in Taiwan on Sept. 2 through Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), as well as through major wireless carriers and retailers across Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, HTC said in a statement.
It did not reveal the phone’s expected retail price.
FAT adds service to Meixian
Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) on Monday launched a regular non-stop route between Greater Taichung and Meixian in southeast China that will operate every Monday.
Starting on Sept. 22, the airline will also offer a service between Greater Taichung and Hefei, also in eastern China, that will likewise operate on Mondays.
In the first six months of the year, Taichung Airport handled 1.05 million travelers, compared with 806,000 in the same period last year, government statistics show.
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
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
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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