US-based mobile chip designer Qualcomm Inc yesterday opened a manufacturing engineering and testing center in Hsinchu, expanding its presence in Taiwan.
Qualcomm also expects to accelerate its purchases in Taiwan, which already rose to NT$240 billion (US$7.9 billion) last year, up from NT$90 billion five years earlier, and should hit NT$300 billion next year.
The center is to provide services for the supply chain in the semiconductor industry, Roawen Chen (陳若文), senior vice president and chief supply chain and operations officer of Qualcomm, said at the facility’s inauguration ceremony.
Photo: Reuters
It is Qualcomm’s largest and most advanced engineering testing center outside of the company’s headquarters in the US, Chen said.
Qualcomm’s ties with Taiwan would further be strengthened when it becomes the first client of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) 4-nanometer fab in Phoenix, Arizona, he said.
The TSMC fab is under construction and expected to start production next year.
When Qualcomm first invested in Taiwan two decades ago, it had only two employees — a hardware engineer and a salesperson — as the company worked with HTC Corp (宏達電) to develop personal digital assistants, he said.
Qualcomm now has a combined workforce of 1,700 in Taipei and Hsinchu, and has invested NT$43 billion in Taiwan to grow with the local semiconductor ecosystem, Chen said.
Last year, it generated about NT$70 billion in production value for Taiwan’s information and communications technology industry, he said, citing a report by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院).
Guests attending the inauguration ceremony included American Institute in Taiwan Director Sandra Oudkirk; Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president of Europe and Asia sales and corporate research at TSMC, and ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉).
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to