Media veteran Cheng Yu (鄭優) was yesterday formally elected as chairman of Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) as part of the government’s efforts to help the state-controlled telecommunications operator find new revenue sources.
The government’s choice of Cheng, which was disclosed on Thursday last week, is aimed at injecting new impetus into the 20-year-old company and accelerating its integration with the information technology, consumer electronics and entertainment sectors, the company said in a statement.
“Chunghwa Telecom will be able to leverage Cheng’s expertise and experience in the digital media sector and speed up the company’s development in digital convergence,” it said.
The board of directors held an extraordinary meeting to elect Cheng as chairman, replacing Rick Tsai (蔡力行), who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.
A handover ceremony is to be held today.
Cheng, 63, is a former president of Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd (臺視), chairman of Radio Taiwan International (央廣) and editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language Commercial Times.
“It is difficult to make an elephant dance. Chunghwa Telecom is the nation’s biggest telecom company with diverse businesses from landlines and mobiles to Internet TV. It will take a major effort to grow from the integration of those businesses,” Doong I-chun (董奕君), who tracks the telecom industry with Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所), said in a telephone interview.
“With Cheng’s extensive experience in the media sector, he will be able to come up with innovative ideas for Chunghwa Telecom to offer digital content,” Doong said.
As the nation’s 4G penetration rate hit 60 percent this year, telecoms are facing big challenges to maintain their growth momentum, Doong said.
Chunghwa Telecom had 6.23 million 4G subscribers as of Sept. 30, accounting for 57 percent of its total mobile subscribers.
Rivals such as Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) and Far EasTone Telecommunication Co Ltd (遠傳電信) have taken more aggressive steps to create new revenue sources through price wars or offering new services, leaving Chunghwa Telecom looking slow on the uptake, which could hurt its net profit next year, an industry source said.
Given his open-mindedness, Cheng could be the right choice to help the company enter a new growth era, the source said.
Chunghwa Telecom’s net profit is forecast to contract 6.6 percent to NT$39.98 billion (US$1.25 billion) this year, the company forecast. It hit a four-year high last year of NT$42.82 billion.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS