The production value of Taiwan’s motorcycles and motorcycle spare parts in the first quarter of this year continued to grow, after hitting record highs in 2019 and last year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
In the first quarter, output value reached NT$35.6 billion (US$1.29 billion), up 16 percent annually, due mainly to robust exports of gasoline-powered motorcycles and electric scooters, the ministry said in a report.
The motorcycle and spare parts industry’s output value reached record highs of NT$122 billion and NT$132.4 billion in 2019 and last year respectively, ministry data showed.
Photo: CNA
From 2012 to last year, production value grew by an average annual rate of 5.2 percent.
The main products in the industry were gasoline-powered motorcycles and scooters, followed by spare parts, e-bicycles and e-scooters, the report said, adding that production of emission-free e-scooters rose rapidly due to growing environmental consciousness and the rise of athleisure trends.
In the first quarter, the production value of gasoline-powered motorcycles and scooters rose 27.8 percent year-on-year, while that of e-scooters grew 29.8 percent, the largest growth among all product categories, the report showed.
However, sales of e-scooters plunged 60.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter due to falling international oil prices and reduced government subsidies for purchases of e-scooters, it said.
Japan was the No. 1 destination for Taiwan’s motorcycle and spare parts exports before 2013, whereas from 2014 to 2018, the exports mainly went to the US, data compiled by the Ministry of Finance showed.
In the past few years, Taiwan’s motorcycle and spare parts have mainly gone to the Netherlands, the data showed.
Exports of motorcycle and spare parts to the Netherlands last year reached US$480 million, up 29.8 percent from a year earlier, while its exports to the US were about US$400 million, up 20.7 percent year-on-year, the data showed.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts