Inventec Corp (英業達) yesterday said it is to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan, as well as an “industry 4.0” R&D center and a 5G connectivity R&D center in China this year, as the company continues its corporate transformation.
“There will be no limit to our budget allocation for the investment in AI, industry 4.0 and 5G technologies, as these will be the core of Inventec’s competitiveness in the coming years,” chairman Tom Cho (卓桐華) told a news conference before the company’s annual banquet for employees at the Nangang Exhibition Hall in Taipei.
Inventec would establish an AI R&D center at its headquarters in Taipei in the first half of this year and plans to invite at least 10 domestic or international AI talents to lead the team, Cho said, adding that the industrial automation R&D team would be based in Tianjin, China, with about 1,000 employees.
The AI and industry 4.0 technologies would be utilized in Inventec’s production lines to raise the company’s operational and production efficiency, he said.
As for the development of 5G connectivity devices, Cho said Inventec Appliance Co (英華達), the company’s “smart” device subsidiary, would take charge of this task in collaboration with several “smart” devices clients.
An expansion in business helped boost the company’s overall revenue by 9.11 percent year-on-year to a record-high NT$467.51 billion (US$16.07 billion) last year, Cho said.
“Revenue from the wireless acoustic products surged by more than 30 percent last year. We believe the strong momentum could continue this year,” Cho added.
Inventec is the sole assembler of Apple Inc’s AirPod, which connects wirelessly to iPhones. The company was forecast to have shipped 20 million units of the device last year, analysts said.
Inventec Appliance chief executive officer David Ho (何代水) did not specify the number of AirPod shipments, but said the firm has expanded its production capacity of the device by 30 percent this quarter from the same period a year ago.
Ho also said about 10,000 workers at Inventec’s Shanghai plant would continue working during the Lunar New Year holiday to meet strong demand from the US client this quarter.
The company is also one of two assemblers of Apple’s HomePod speaker, which is to hit US stores on Feb. 9.
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