Taipei Times
Date: Nov 27, 2020
By: Lisa Wang / Staff reporter

Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業), which sells its products under the brandname KYMCO, yesterday unveiled a new electric sport scooter, dubbed F9, to target eco-conscious riders.

The F9 is the first electric scooter designed by the company from scratch, it said.

The nation’s biggest manufacturer of gas-powered scooters, Kwang Yang ventured into electric scooters about three years ago by remaking its gas-powered “Many” and “Nice” series into electric ones. At the time, the focus was mostly on its battery charging system, called Ionex.

“KYMCO’s all-new F9 model offers not only urban mobility, but also satisfies riders’ desire for a better steering experience,” company chairman Allen Ko (柯勝峰) told a global conference in Taipei.    [FULL  STORY]

QNAP has launched the TVS-h1288X and TVS-h1688X, 2 new enterprise-grade NAS servers with the Intel Xeon W-1250 6-core/12-thread processor. They are also compatible with PCIe Gen 3 cards that can augment them with up to 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports. These storage solutions are also the first to launch with the new QuTS hero OS.

Notbook Check
Date: 11/25/2020
By: Deirdre O'Donnell

Taiwan-based QNAP now offers new tower-form network-attached servers (NAS) based on the

Intel Xeon W-1250. This hnn88x series also features hot-swappable 2.5 or 3.5-inch SATA 6Gbps drive bays, or alternatively, houses up to 2 M.2 22110 or 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSDs.

Its connectivity is handled through 2 10GBASE-T ports (1/10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE)) or 4 RJ45 ports (1/2.5GbE). They also have 3 PCIe Gen 3 expansion slots, athough 1 is occupied with the dual-port 10GBASE-T NIC. The others could be used for this OEM's Thunderbolt 3 cards, although they are separate purchases.

The new NAS products also exhibit 1 HDMI 1.4b port by default. There is also a 3.5mm dynamic microphone jack, a 3.5mm line out jack and a built-in speaker for more direct (potentially 4K) file use. They also support ZFS-based data integrity and reduction, and are also the first QuTS hero-edition QNAP devices.+    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 11/25/2020
By Frances Huang

Taipei, Nov. 25 (CNA) Shares in Taiwan closed lower Wednesday despite gains on Wall Street overnight because of stiff technical resistance as the Taiex closed in on 13,900 points, dealers said.

Selling focused on the bellwether electronics sector, which had driven the broader market sharply higher in recent sessions, while non-tech stocks ended mixed, they said.

The Taiex, the Taiwan Stock Exchange's (TWSE) benchmark weighted index, closed down 68.3 points, or 0.49 percent, at 13,738.83, after moving between 13,731.81 and 13,893.20. Turnover was NT$263.61 billion (US$9.24 billion).

The market opened up 0.39 percent and hit the day's high 15 minutes into the session after the Dow Jones Industrial Average breached 30,000 points for the first time overnight amid continued optimism over COVID-19 vaccine developments, dealers said.    [FULL  STORY]

MIXED PICTURE: While suppliers of chemical and steel products were more optimistic than their peers, most companies in the service sector expressed a neutral outlook

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 26, 2020
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter

Business sentiment among local firms last month diverged as manufacturers expressed confidence concerning their outlook, but service providers and construction firms turned neutral with a conservative tendency, a survey published by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) found.

The sentiment gauge for the manufacturing industry was 101.27 last month, up 0.81 points from a revised 100.46 in September, increasing for six months in a row to the highest level since August 2018.

Manufacturers with positive views about business prospects increased 7.5 percentage points to 25.6 percent, while companies with a negative outlook dropped 3.6 percentage points to 21.3 percent, the monthly survey published yesterday showed.

Suppliers of chemical and steel products are more optimistic than their peers in other sectors, benefiting from infrastructure construction projects, the institute’s economic forecasting center director Gordon Sun (孫明德) said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 11/24/2020
By: Flor Wang and Wu Hsin-yun

Taipei, Nov. 24 (CNA) The number of furloughed workers across Taiwan has dropped for the third week in a row, to the lowest level since late June, the Ministry of Labor reported on Tuesday.

According to the latest statistics released on Friday, 486 firms had 10,934 employees on unpaid leave as of that day, down 383 from a week ago, the first time the number has fallen for three consecutive weeks since the peak period in late June due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of workers on temporary leave peaked in late June, when the figures started to fall as the pandemic showed initial signs of easing around the world, the ministry's Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment Deputy Director Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) said.

This is the first time the number of furloughed workers has fallen for three straight weeks since the middle of the year, Huang explained.    [FULL  STORY]

RESTRICTED: The conglomerate’s net income for the first three quarters dropped 6.29% from a year earlier, due to the low interest rate environment, its president said

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 25, 2020
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter

Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding Co (TCFH, 合庫金控) aims to improve its business next year in line with the nation’s economic growth, but uncertainty related to the COVID-19 pandemic lingers, top executives told an investors’ conference yesterday.

The guardedly positive view was shared after the state-run conglomerate reported NT$12.39 billion (US$429.75 million) in net income for the first three quarters — a 6.29 percent decline from the same period last year, as the low interest rate environment restricted its earnings ability, TCFH president Chen Mei-tsu (陳美足) said.

That translated into earnings per share of NT$0.9, down from NT$0.97 for the same period last year, company data showed.

“We will take cues from the nation’s GDP growth next year in setting profitability goals,” Chen told an online conference call, adding that the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics in August forecast that Taiwan’s economy would grow 3.92 percent next year.
FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 11/23/2020
By: Flor Wang and Su Ssu-yun

Taipei, Nov. 23 (CNA) Taiwan's jobless rate contracted further in October to hit its lowest level since April, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported on Monday.

The unemployment rate hit 3.8 percent last month, down by 0.03 percentage points from September, the lowest level in six months, the DGBAS said.

After seasonal adjustment, the country registered a jobless rate of 3.77 percent in October — down by 0.01 percentage points from the previous month and the fifth consecutive monthly decline since May, it said.

Taiwan outperformed several major countries in this regard, ahead of Canada with 8.9 percent unemployment, France with 7.9 percent, the United States with 6.9 percent, Germany with 4.5 percent and South Korea with 4.2 percent, it noted.    [FULL  STORY]

FAVORABLE: Demand for information and communication products is still strong amid the pandemic, but it might have peaked, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 24, 2020
By: Angelica Oung / Staff reporter

The nation’s industrial production last month increased 7.06 percent year-on-year, but slid 1.4 percent from September’s record peak, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.

It was the ninth straight month of continuous year-on-year growth for industrial production, as demand for information and communications technology products remained strong, the ministry said, but added that demand might have peaked.

“The demand for COVID-19-related electronics is still robust when you look at it on a year-on-year basis, even though it is down from last month’s record,” Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Huang Wei-jie (黃偉傑) told a news conference in Taipei.

By sector, production of electronic components was up 16.93 percent year-on-year, but down 1.35 percent monthly. In particular, production of integrated circuits rose 23.03 percent annually, but fell 2.98 percent monthly, the ministry said in a report.    [FULL  STORY]

Chromebox 4 can support up to three 4K displays simultaneously

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/11/20
By: Eric Chang, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Asus has announced its latest mini PC that runs Google’s Chrome OS — the Chromebox 4.

At 148.5 x 148.5 x 40 mm, the new micro PC is similar in size to the Chromebox 3, but instead of 8th Gen Intel processors, the Chromebox 4 offers a variety of different 10th Gen Intel processors, according to The Verge. Buyers can choose from the Intel Celeron 5205U or one of three Intel Core processors: an i3-10110U, an i5-10210U, or an i7-10510U.

The Chromebox 4 can be configured with 4 GB or 8GB of memory (DDR4-SO-DIMM) and up to 256 GB of storage. The device comes with multiple ports, including HDMI 2.0, USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, which can handle up to three 4K displays at one time, according to the report. The system also supports dual-band 802.11ax WiFi 6.

Similar to other Chrome OS devices, the Chromebox 4 supports Google Play, allowing users to use Android apps natively. The new machine also allows for automatic Chrome software and security updates, which means that users do not have to download and restart as one would with Windows or Apple computers.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 11/21/2020
By: Stacy Hsu and Y.F. Low

From left to right: American Institute in Taiwan Managing Director Ingrid Larson, U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach, Taiwan's Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Chern-chyi, and Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the U.S. Hsiao Bi-khim. Photo courtesy of TECRO

Washington, Nov. 20 (CNA) The first U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue opened in Washington, D.C. Friday with the signing of a memorandum of understanding that will lay the groundwork for deeper and more comprehensive economic cooperation ahead, according to Taiwan's representative office in the United States.

The MOU was inked by Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the U.S. Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and American Institute in Taiwan Managing Director Ingrid Larson as part of the opening ceremony, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) said in a statement.

The signing was withnessed by U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach and Taiwan's Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Chern-chyi (陳正祺), the office said.   [FULL  STORY]