TRADE
Delegation to visit China
The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Wu Ming-ji (吳明機) is to lead a delegation to Beijing this morning to attend a small-scale informal negotiation with China regarding the cross-strait trade in goods agreement. “The half-day meeting with Bejing is aimed to narrow the gap on tariff reductions for industrial and agricultural products between Taiwan and China,” Wu told a press conference. The issues of special rules of product origin and trade remedies would also be discussed during the meeting, he said. The 13th round of formal talks on the agreement are expected to take place in Taipei after the presidential elections, Wu said.
CHIP TESTERS
SPIL posts revenue growth
Chip tester and packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) yesterday posted 3.7 percent sequential growth in revenue for last quarter of NT$20.77 billion (US$624.3 million), beating the company’s expectation of a 6.14 percent decline. In October, SPIL forecast that revenue last quarter would fall to between NT$18.8 billion and NT$20 billion. The better-than-expected figure came after SPIL posted a 2.4 percent monthly growth in revenue for last month of NT$6.93 billion from November’s NT$6.77 billion. Last year, SPIL’s total revenue edged lower 0.3 percent to NT$82.84 billion from NT$83.07 billion a year earlier.
SOLAR WAFERS
Green expects price rise
Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s largest solar wafer maker, yesterday said it expected a price uptick last quarter to extend into this quarter, driven by rising demand for high-end solar wafers. Green Energy said it was unable to fully satisfy customers’ demand and it would farm out production to solve the supply constraint. The company yesterday posted a 9.4 percent sequential increase in revenue for last month at NT$1.53 billion from NT$1.4 billion in November. For the whole of last year, revenue was up 1.45 percent to NT$15.5 billion from NT$15.28 billion in 2014.
GROCERIES
Delivery service launched
Singapore-based Honestbee (誠實蜜蜂) yesterday launched an online grocery concierge service in Taipei that pledges door-to-door delivery within one hour. Initially, the service will be only made available in the districts of Shihlin (士林), Daan (大安), Xinyi (信義) and Songshan (松山), the company said. The company said its grocery concierge service is also a part-time employment platform for those seeking extra income as designated shoppers and delivery people.
AUTOMAKERS
Mercedes reports good sales
Despite slow domestic economic growth, the luxury car market in Taiwan was hot last year, with 21,500 new Mercedes-Benz being sold, the Taiwan branch of the company said yesterday. It said one in every 1,000 people in Taiwan bought a Mercedes-Benz last year, increasing the company’s share of the Taiwan auto market to 5.2 percent. The strong sales were attributed to Mercedes-Benz Taiwan’s successful launch last year of 14 new models, which attracted nearly 30 percent of young buyers. This year will see a sharp growth in sales of the Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class and GLE-Class SUV models, the company said.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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