Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) has acquired a 5.03 percent stake in a Malaysian holding company with semiconductor interests to boost its presence in the IC sector.
Hon Hai, known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said on Thursday that it spent 108 million ringgit (US$26.25 million) on the stake in Dagang NeXchange Bhd, which operates its information technology businesses through its subsidiaries.
Dagang NeXchange owns a 60 percent stake in SilTerra Malaysia Sdn Bhd, which runs 8-inch wafer facilities in Malaysia, Hon Hai said.
Photo: CNA
Through the investment in Dagang NeXchange, Hon Hai said that it would extend its reach in semiconductor and electric vehicle development in the ASEAN market.
SilTerra, which was founded in 1995, specializes in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technologies that are used in a wide range of products, such as logic ICs, mixed-signal devices and radio frequency components, according to its Web site.
The company has also invested in other specialty areas such as silicon photonics, biophotonics and discrete power.
The investment comes after Hon Hai last month announced that it was teaming up with Yageo Corp (國巨), the world’s third-largest multi-layer ceramic capacitor supplier, to set up a joint semiconductor company named XSemi Corp (國瀚半導體) in Hsinchu to develop and sell small ICs.
Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) earlier this year said that the company has prioritized developing small ICs priced at less than US$2, which are made from 6 or 8-inch wafers to avoid the sizable capital investment needed for 12-inch wafer production.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy