Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/09/17
By: Wei Shu and Romulo Huang

Taipei, Sept. 17 (CNA) Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (台塑石化), a privately owned fuel supplier, said Saturday that it will cut its gasoline and diesel prices by NT$0.2 (US$0.006) per liter next week, in reflection of a fall in international crude oil prices.

The weakness in global oil prices resulted from concerns over a supply glut after a report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) earlier this week pointed to higher-than-expected oil inventories in the U.S. market, Formosa Petrochemical said.

With the price cut, which will become effective from 1 a.m. Monday, the company will again drop its price for super diesel below the NT$20 per liter mark.

After the adjustment, fuel prices at Formosa Petrochemical gas stations nationwide will fall to NT$19.9 per liter for super diesel, NT$22.6 per liter for 92 octane unleaded, NT$24.1 per liter for 95 unleaded and NT$26.4 per liter for 98 unleaded.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/09/17
By: Frances Huang

Taipei, Sept. 17 (CNA) The hiring intention of Taiwanese employers for the fourth quarter of this year

has improved, with a upswing reversing a five-quarter decline, according to U.S.-based human resources advisory firm ManpowerGroup.

Citing the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, the advisory firm said that Taiwan’s net employment outlook for the fourth quarter stood at 21 percent, 2 percentage points higher than the previous quarter. But the fourth quarter figure still fell 13 percentage points from a year earlier amid an economic slowdown.

The poll, which reflects hiring confidence among employers, calculated the net employment outlook after seasonal adjustments by subtracting the percentage of employers anticipating a decline in total employment from the percentage expecting to see an increase.

ManpowerGroup said that 27 percent of 1,005 employers polled said that they intended to recruit more employees in the fourth quarter, while 5 percent of them said that they would cut their workforce during the October-December period.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/09/17
By: Wei Shu and Frances Huang

Taipei, Sept. 17 (CNA) Amid a slowdown in the local property market, prices of homes near the stations on Taipei Metro’s Tamsui-Xinyi Line fell by more than 5 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, according to the Yung Ching Realty Group (永慶房屋集團), one of Taiwan’s leading property sales agencies.

Citing data compiled based on the government’s home price registration system, Yung Ching Realty said that the prices of residential property located within 800 meters around the stations of the Tamsui-Xinyi Line fell to NT$524,000 (US$16,529) per ping (one ping equals 3.5 square meters) in the past six months, down 5.2 percent from a year earlier.

Even the area near the Taipei 101/World Trade Center station — considered a top-notch business location — took a hit, with home prices there falling by 18.4 percent year-on-year in the six-month period, the steepest fall among the 27 stations on the Tamsui-Xinyi Line, the data showed.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/09/16
By: Esme Jiang and Frances Huang

Tokyo, Sept. 16 (CNA) Palmer Luckey, founder of California-based virtual reality

technology firm Oculus VR, visited the booth of Taiwan-based HTC Corp. (宏達電) at the Tokyo Game Show on Friday to experience the HTC Vive, the HTC’s first VR headset.

The presence of Luckey at the special VR pavilion at the Tokyo Game Show came under the spotlight as Oculus VR and HTC compete head-to-head in the global VR market. Google Inc.-invested Oculus unveiled the Rift VR headset in 2012.

Wearing the HTC Vive, the Oculus founder played the new game “Linked-door Loves Space Channel 5” developed by Japanese telecom operator KDDI. The KDDI software is the first game in the world that allows several players to experience the game simultaneously.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: September 17, 2016
By: Christine Chou

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Thousands of consumers lined up in front of authorized Apple

resellers to purchase an iPhone 7 as sales began in Taiwan on Friday.

Apple Inc.’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus went on sale Friday in 28 countries including Taiwan, marking the first time in history that Taiwan joined the list of markets given early access to the phone.

Studio A, an Apple Premium Reseller with 33 outlets nationwide, reported that the first batch of handsets at its flagship Xinyi store sold out within an hour, as thousands of consumers lined up in front of the store hours before it opened at 8 a.m.

One customer, surnamed Huang, told local media he stood in line for 32 hours in front of the Xinyi store.

The first 100 customers in the line were offered free sandwiches and coffee provided by a cafe owned by Studio A.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 16, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA, PARIS

Two Taiwanese textile firms participating in a Paris show have set their sights on the

Muslim world, which accounts for about a fifth of the global population, by introducing new technology and innovative designs to appeal to the demographic, market sources said yesterday.

The population of the global Muslim world ranges between 1.2 billion and 1.6 billion, the sources said, adding that the two firms have high hopes about the Muslim market.
One of the two firms is Rui Yuan Co (瑞元), which had sent a delegation to demonstrate its products to appeal to potential Muslim buyers at Texworld Paris, one of the most important trade shows for the global textile industry, which ended yesterday.

Rui Yuan, which specializes in garments made from functional fabrics, took Muslim headscarves to the four-day exhibition.

“A female Muslim owns an average of 40 to 50 headscarves. They tend to buy new headscarves to replace some of their old ones every two to three months, so we have spotted the tremendous business opportunities in this regard,” Rui Yuan executive Li Chih-ming (李志明) said.     [FULL  STORY]