STOCK EXCHANGE
Firms to become bilingual
Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange with paid-in capital of NT$15 billion or more are from today required to publish material information in both Chinese and English, the exchange said yesterday. The plan is to be implemented in phases, the exchange said, adding that 86 companies are required to implement the new requirements in the first phase. So far, 343 companies listed on the main bourse have published bilingual material information, accounting for 36 percent of all listed companies, the exchange said.
ELECTRONICS
Lite-On to complete sale
Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技) is to complete the sale of its solid-state drive (SSD) business today after announcing the US$165 million deal with Kioxia Holdings Corp last year. The transaction with Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Holdings Corp, includes the SSD business, its assets, intellectual property, technologies and liabilities, as well as a 0.4 percent stake in CNEX Labs Inc, a California-based SSD start-up, Lite-On said yesterday. Lite-On said that it would continue to focus on power supplies and optoelectronic components, as well as applications in the cloud computing, server, network and communications, and Internet of Things sectors.
COMPUTERS
Advantech supplying PCSC
Advantech Co Ltd (研華), the world’s largest industrial computer manufacturer, on Monday said that it is supplying artificial intelligence of things solutions to President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), so that the latter can build smart energy management systems for its convenience stores without workers. PCSC, the operator of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, has adopted the energy management solutions in its un-staffed X-Store in Kaohsiung, Advantech said. Advantech’s solutions monitor store temperature, humidity and electricity use, to enhance food safety and cut costs, it said.
HEALTHCARE
Mask requisitions continue
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic having subsided, the government is to continue to requisition 8 million masks per day until the end of this month, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said on Monday. The official said the requisitioning was extended for another month from the originally intended end date of yesterday at an inter-ministerial meeting. The decision was made as the pandemic remains severe in much of the world and the government wants to ensure that the nation has sufficient masks should there be a second wave of infections. The government has been requisitioning all masks manufactured in the nation since Jan. 31.
AUTOMAKERS
Byton suspends operations
Byton Ltd (拜騰), a Chinese electric vehicle start-up that plotted a US entry for years, but never sold a vehicle, is suspending all operations in China and furloughing its employees after the COVID-19 pandemic made it tougher to launch its business. The suspension starts today and is set to last for six months, Byton told its senior employees in an e-mail seen by Bloomberg News. The company invited employees to resign by yesterday and said it was making efforts to obtain funding to pay salaries owed to workers. Those who resign would have priority in being paid, it said. Byton has about 1,000 employees in China and about 500 elsewhere, including in the US.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
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