Taiwan-news

Asahi invest NT$ 20bn to increase production of glass substrate

Asahi Glass Fine Techno Taiwan (AFT) has decided to extend its factory again
by leasing 16.82-hectare land in Yun-Ling Industrial Park. Construction of the
factory is set for December 20, which consist two TFT-LCD glass substrate
melting pots and three grinding lines to produce the fifth generation large-size
glass substrates. Industrial Development Bureau under Ministry of Economics
Affairs (MOEA) indicated that it is the largest foreign investment recently
estimated to be around NT$ 20 billion. Such investment is a great aid to the
development of Taiwan's LCD TV industry. Domestic video industry's value is
expected to rise from NT$ 715 billion to NT$ 950 billion. Asahi estimates that
by the year 2007 the demand for glass substrates will be double comparing to
last year.

BenQ to acquire more international LCD TV brands

After the acquisition of Siemen's mobile phone department, BenQ has never
stopped its move of acquisition. Lei Hwei, chief strategic officer, BenQ said
yesterday that it will not rule out acquiring other enterprises with
international brands. As suggested, BenQ will focus on LCD TV brands as its next
top priority target, but acquisition of TV brands is difficult and it is not
easy to operate. Lei Hwei referred to what KY Lee, Chairman, BenQ had said,
"BenQ will continue its move of acquisition and the targets will still be
international brands." Lei Hwei did not mention who would be the potential
targets for acquisition. It has been predicted that such product would be LCD
TV. By analyzing the current TV brands, there are few famous US brands and
European brands; therefore, if BenQ wants to acquire TV brands, it is most
likely to be either Chinese or Japanese brand.

Gigabyte to setup mobile phone plant in India

In a product conference, the Chairman of Gigabyte indicated that Gigabyte
mobile phone would expand the scale worldwide. The overseas plant set-up plan
would take place in India by cooperating with Indian OEM partner - D-Link. In
that sense, the cooperation was also expanded from motherboards to mobile phone
production. The OEM partner would mainly assemble low-end mobile phones for
Gigabyte. Among the Taiwan branded mobile phones, BenQ already decided to set up
product assurance house in India. After BenQ, Gigabyte would be the first
domestic mobile brand to build the production plant in India. The Chairman of
Gigabyte also indicated that the overall revenue of Gigabyte excluded mobile
phone division next year would grow over 10 percent from this year with over NT$
40 billion. In terms of division categories, the motherboard business would
still take the major portion at 60 percent.

Mainland association support local ray storage specification FVD

The intensive promotion of infra-ray high resolution FVD lead by Industrial
Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has entered into the stage of aggressive
preparation and is expected to receive the support from mainland's association.
Huang De-Ray, President of Taiwan IT Storage Technology Association, recently
indicated that mainland's China Electronic Audio Association and China Audio and
Video Association have kept close contact with Taiwan hoping to jointly support
ray storage specification. It is expected to move forward in January next year.
ITRI has been aggressively promoting FVD whereas the mainland side has also
supported its high-resolution specification products such as EVD and HVD. Huang
suggested that as mainland has sensed that having too many different
specifications would diversify the resources, mainland is now highly interested
in FVD.

Quanta to make US$ 100 low-cost laptops for education

Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc will be the original design manufacturer (ODM)
for the US$100 laptop project called 'One Laptop per Child' (OLPC). OLPC is a
Delaware-based, non-profit organization under the Media Lab of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) and is led by Professor Nicholas Negroponte. The
organization aims to promote low-price laptops for education. The initial
production of five million to 15 million units will first be sent to China,
Brazil, India, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand. The US$ 100 laptop will
be Linux-based and only depends on hand cranking can support the energy for
operation. Also, uses can go to Internet with only mesh networking. Quanta
signed a research contract with MIT in the beginning of this year in a period of
five years and with value of US$ 20 million.

Source: www.computex.com.tw