Inventec Corp (英業達), the sole assembler of Apple Inc’s wireless AirPods, is reportedly helping the US company produce its first home artificial intelligence (AI) product in the second half of this year.
KGI Securities Co (凱基證券) analyst Kuo Ming-chi (郭明錤) said in a report on Monday that Apple is likely to unveil a Siri-powered speaker during its annual developers’ conference, the WWDC 2017, in June and the product is to be manufactured by Inventec.
“The company has been codeveloping the home AI product with Apple for more than two years,” Kuo said in the report.
The device would be Apple’s first home AI product and would compete against Amazon.com Inc’s smart home assistance product Echo, Kuo said, adding that he estimates the price of the product would be more than the Echo’s US$179.
Kuo said the smart home AI market is too big for technology companies such as Apple to ignore, as the devices serve as the main controllers of other Internet-of-Things devices.
Apple could ship about 10 million units of the not-yet-announced home AI product in the first year, he forecast.
Another analyst, who declined to be named, said by telephone it is likely that Inventec is working on Apple’s voice-controlled home AI product, as the US company’s AirPods also rely on voice controls.
Inventec declined to comment on the report, saying that it cannot discuss its clients’ plans.
Inventec Appliance Corp (英華達) chief executive David Ho (何代水) on March 28 told investors that the company’s smart devices business, including smartphones, speakers and smart home products, would be one of its growth engines this year.
Shipments and revenue from smart devices, which contributed nearly 20 percent of Inventec’s total revenue last year, are forecast to climb by a double-digit percentage this year, Ho said.
Inventec shares closed 0.45 percent higher at NT$22.55 on the local bourse yesterday.
A total of 11.72 million shares were traded during the session, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of