TRANSPORTATION
Ministries mull EV tax
The Ministry of Finance yesterday refused to say whether it would continue to exempt electric vehicles (EVs) from a sales levy next year, adding that the Ministry of Economic Affairs was drafting a bill on the industry’s development. The finance ministry has exempted EVs from the tax to help boost sales, but the measure is to expire in January. The finance ministry said it would take cues from the economic ministry on the issue. Without the exemption, people would be required to pay NT$6,000 more to buy an electric scooter and an additional NT$400,000 to buy an electric car, local media said.
AIRLINES
Chicago service launched
EVA Airways (長榮航空) yesterday launched direct flights between Taipei and Chicago in a bid to extend its reach in the North American market. EVA said it would operate four round-trip flights per week using one of its latest-model Boeing Co 777-300ER aircraft configured for 333 passengers. EVA, which has more flights and seat capacity between North America and Taiwan than any other airline, said it hopes to elevate its market presence through the new service to the US city, which attracts more than 40 million travelers per year. With more direct flight destinations, EVA can offer greater flexibility, especially for transit passengers, who can now extend their journeys to and from Southeast Asia, EVA chairman Lin Pao-shui (林寶水) said at a ceremony to mark the maiden flight. With the launch of the new route, EVA operates 77 flights per week between Taiwan and destinations in North America, including Chicago, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Toronto and Vancouver. There are also to be extra flights on the Taipei-Seattle route from Dec. 8, increasing the number of weekly services from seven to 10 and the total number of flights between Taiwan and North America to 80, Lin added.
ELECTRONICS
FTC approves Epson deal
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday approved Epson Taiwan Technology & Trading Ltd’s (臺灣愛普生) planned acquisition of repair and maintenance company TekCare Corp (捷修網). The commission said that after consulting local repair and maintenance service providers, it decided that the deal would not monopolize the market. Epson Taiwan subsidiary epMall Co Ltd (愛普網) is to increase its stake in TekCare from 30 percent to 100 percent via the deal, the commission said.
DISPLAYMAKERS
Giantplus net income falls
Flat-panel maker Giantplus Technology Co (凌巨科技) yesterday reported a significant decline in net income for last quarter due to the rising cost of new product development. The company’s net profit last quarter dropped significantly to NT$27.76 million (US$879,483), compared with NT$346.78 million in the same period last year. The result also marked a plunge from the previous quarter’s NT$205.87 million, the firm’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed. The earnings result marked the firm’s worst performance in the past six quarters. Giantplus attributed the decline to costs associated with new products and currency exchange losses. The firm’s combined net profit in the first three quarters of this year totaled NT$364.46 million, up 4.58 percent from NT$348.47 million in the same period last year, the filing showed.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS