Taiwanese companies win second highest total award tally in Manila

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/06/02
By: Scott Morgan, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – 8 Taiwanese companies won 12 trophies at the Asia

Responsible Enterprise Awards in Manila, the Philippines yesterday evening, reported CNA.

The awards are organized by Enterprise Asia, a prominent NGO and have become a leading corporate social responsibility award in Asia. The awards recognize Asian businesses for demonstrating responsible and sustainable business practices.

A summary of awards won by Taiwanese companies and leaders is as follows:
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/04
By Tien Yu-pin and Frances Huang

Taipei, June 4 (CNA) Car sales in Taiwan increased more than 3 percent in May from the

previous month, according to government statistics, but market analysts said the growth was limited because it was tax season.

Data from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) showed 35,686 cars were sold in the month of May, an increase of 3.6 percent from April and 1 percent from a year earlier.

It was a strong recovery from April, when car sales fell by a monthly 12.2 percent in the wake of 15 percent decline in imported cars on the local market.

Analysts said the 3.6 percent monthly increase in May was capped by slow buying interest as it was tax paying month in Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

Netizens came up with interesting ideas for I-Mei on its new banana products

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/06/01
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – As a massive oversupply and a significant dip in prices is causing concern for Taiwanese banana farmers, food giant I-Mei Foods Co. announced it was procuring 100 tons of bananas from local farmers at reasonable prices to ease their burden.

Taiwanese banana growers have been slashing prices amid massive oversupply recently, with top-graded (Grade A) bananas falling to NT$6 per kilogram and lowest-graded (Grade C) to NT$1 per kilogram, according to an agricultural official. To address the concerns of local farmers, I-Mei has decided to purchase 100 tons of top-graded bananas (in box) at a price of NT$16.5 per kilogram, which is far higher than its current market value.

I-Mei announced the procurement initiative on its Facebook fans page on Friday, saying that the one-time purchase of bananas at low prices and then give it away for free is not a long-term realistic solution to tackle the problem. The company said that it’s mulling over more value-added options to create sustainable demand for bananas.

“There should be more possibilities in addition to banana pastry, dried banana, and banana chips,” said the company.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/01
By: Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 1 (CNA) With its well-established supply chain and strength in electronics,

Taiwan might be able to crack the global automotive market in several years rather than decades as some industry analysts have predicted, thanks to the emergence of electric vehicles (EVs), according to EE Times, a U.S.-based online electronics industry magazine.

Taiwan’s Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) was upbeat when EE Times cited him in its article, titled “Go to Taiwan for EVs? Well, Tesla Did,” published Thursday, as saying: “With electronics at its heart, EVs should play to our strength.”

Paul Chou (周宗保), secretary-general of the Taiwan Telematics Industry Association, was quoted as predicting that in the days of combustion engines, it might have taken 50 years to build an automotive industry. “But with EV, we think we can pull it off in less than five years, here in Taiwan.”    [FULL  STORY]

DECEMBER TARGET: The platform is to have 7 petaflops of computing power, as well as a storage capacity of 50 petabytes, which is approximately 50 million gigabytes

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 02, 2018
By: Ted Chen  /  Staff reporter

Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) and Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大

哥大) yesterday won a NT$1.1 billion (US$36.83 million) government contract to build a cloud-computing platform to boost the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Organized by the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC), the contract aims to build a national public cloud-computing platform that can deliver supercharged computer power to Taiwanese businesses and academic and research institutions, and incubate homegrown AI applications through improved deep learning and big data analysis capabilities.

The firms won the contract over a rival partnership between Acer Inc (宏碁), Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) and a Japanese partner proposing to use hardware supplied by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密).

As AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous in industrial applications and everyday life, the technology could be the next boom industry in Taiwan, just as PCs were in the past, and neglecting the technology could spell doom for the nation’s economic competitiveness, Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) said in an address at a ceremony in Taipei.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/30
By: By Chu Tse-wei and Kuan-lin Liu, Central News Agency

TAIPEI (CNA) – The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and

American e-commerce and cloud computing company Amazon signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Wednesday to promote Taiwan-made electronics products and brands in the global market.

Under the agreement, Amazon will actively assist TAITRA in hosting forums for electronics businesses, while TAITRA will recommend well-performing businesses for Amazon’s professional training program, TAITRA President and CEO Walter Yeh said.

Cindy Tai, Amazon’s head of Global Selling Asia who signed the MOU on the company’s behalf, said Amazon global stores provide comprehensive and innovative solutions to its customers.

In working with Taiwan, Amazon is looking to help manufacturers, brands, and other businesses take advantage of digital opportunities and capture a bigger share of the global market, she said.     [SOURCE]