PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), the nation’s largest e-commerce operator, plans to halve its delivery fees to NT$100 (US$3.31) for customers living on outlying islands in an effort to boost business outside of Taiwan proper.
The company’s new rates would be cheaper than Yahoo Taiwan Holding Ltd’s (雅虎) and Books.com Co Ltd’s (博客來), PChome said.
“We believe it could energize online shopping activity on the outlying islands,” PChome chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) said at a news conference on Thursday in Taipei to announce the new measure.
He did not elaborate on expected revenue growth from the move.
Both PChome and Yahoo Taiwan ship a wide range of products to Kinmen, Penghu, Matsu, Green Island and Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lanyu), while Books.com delivers only books to the outlying islands, said a PChome source, who refused to be named.
Momo.com Inc (富邦媒體) and Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure Co Ltd (東森購物) do not ship products to outlying islands, the source said.
The population of the outlying islands is about 270,000 people.
Because of high logistics costs and a small market size, the outlying islands contributed only 1 percent to PChome’s monthly orders and order values, the source said, declining to disclose the order amounts.
Jan Hung-tze said the cheaper costs of online shopping would not only energize the e-commerce activity, but also open a window for cross-border e-commerce between Taiwan and China.
For example, residents in Kinmen could order a wide range of products from PChome and resell them to Chinese tourists visiting the county, he said.
PChome said it would deliver goods for free for the first month if the total purchase value exceeds NT$1,000 to promote the new service.
In the first half of this year, the company’s cumulative revenue climbed 7.91 percent annually to NT$13.78 billion, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
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