Two United States Navy F-18s made an emergency landing in Tainan, a city in south Taiwan, Wednesday afternoon after declaring an in-flight emergency due to a mechanical issue.

The two aircraft transmitted a 7700 “squawk” code which is recognized by the International Civil Aviation Organization as meaning general emergency. The two aircraft landed safely at Tainan Air Force Base shortly after 1:00 pm.

An American diplomatic official is quoted by local media as saying the two aircraft were on a “routine” flight when they encountered a mechanical emergency and required to land. The official thanked Taiwan for its assistance in getting the planes safely to the ground.

As Taiwan’s Air Force does not have F-18s in its fleet, the aircraft and pilots will remain in Taiwan until technicians and spare parts can be sent in from the closest US base in Okinawa, Japan.

A sensitive landing

Landing two US military aircraft in Taiwan has the potential to create further complications due to the island’s unique relationship with China and most of the world.

Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, does not have formal diplomatic relations with most countries. Following the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party retreated from China to Taiwan in 1949. That same year, Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China. Until the late 1970s most of the world considered the Republic of China (Taiwan) to be “China”. In 1979 that recognition shifted to China, with China taking the ROC’s former seat at the UN and the US and most countries of the world opening up full diplomatic relations.

Relations between most countries and Taiwan are conducted through non-official “Trade Institutes” that act as de-facto embassies without the official title.

To this day Taiwan and China see each other as the legitimate “China”, with the other being considered a rogue province. Relations between the two improved in 1992, when both ROC and PRC officials met to sign the 1992 Consensus which states that both sides agree there is “One China” but that definition is subject to interpretation. In 2005 the two sides agreed to have daily cross-strait flights.

While the United States does not have official relations with Taiwan, it provides defensive weapons to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act. The act does state that the US will come to the defense of Taiwan should the PRC attack it, provided that Taiwan does not declare independence first. While the US does not provide top-tier weapons to Taiwan for fear of angering China, it has provided the nation (under protest from China) with F-16s, Black Hawk helicopters, and Apache attack helicopters amongst other kit.

A ‘routine’ flight?

While diplomatic officials in Taiwan maintain that the flight was “routine”, it was likely anything but.

The area the jets flew through is heavily contested, and to get there they no doubt had to traverse through Chinese Air Defense Identification Zones.

In the last few years China has taken an aggressive posturing in the South China Sea, to the protest of neighbouring states. Many states in the area, such as the Philippines, have expressed concern about China’s expansion in the area. China has recently been carrying out military drills in the South China Sea’s Bashi Channel, near Philippines’ territorial waters, which is notable because of the distance from China’s coastlines.

It is likely that the US jets were in the region to shadow or monitor the drill to symbolize to China that the US has interests in the area as well. The emergency landing in Taiwan was no doubt noticed by China — but perhaps that was the point.

The post US F-18s Make Emergency Landing in Taiwan appeared first on VR World.

Gogoro, the Taiwan-based electric scooter startup that counts HTC’s (TPE: 2498) Cher Wang as investor, has generated a lot of buzz since its unveiling at CES in January. Now those interested in buying one of Gogoro’s electric scooters will have the chance to demo one at a retail experience zone opening up later this week in Taipei’s Xinyi shopping district.

Gogoro is targeting a summer launch in Metro Taipei, which consists of Taipei and New Taipei City. Gogoro’s scooters differ from traditional electric scooters: you can’t plug them in. Instead, riders take the scooters to a battery swapping center when they need a fresh battery. Gogoro owners need to subscribe to a monthly plan, and the company promises that there will be dozens of stations around the city and each station is said to be roughly the size of an ATM.

Battery swapping plans for electric vehicles are in many ways the ultimate cure for range anxiety, but they have been met with challenges due to the complexity of replacing a battery in most electric vehicles. However, this isn’t the case with Gogoro as the 20-pound battery can be replaced in a matter of seconds.

To ensure that its scooters arrive bug-free, Gogoro is launching a pilot program in April. 100 riders will be given the chance to try out the scooters over the course of two months. The company is hoping that the beta testers will log 100,000 collective hours during the pilot program.

Pricing has yet to be announced.

The problem with electric scooters

The Metro Taipei area has the highest density of scooters in the world, and scooters are the biggest single contributor to air pollution in the city.

But as VR World reported in February a combination of bad public policy and misplaced subsidy programs have stopped the hindered the adoption rate of the electric two-wheeled vehicles.

But all of this can change with Gogoro. While the Taiwanese government might have failed to put in place proper subsidy programs to encourage adoption, the local Taipei city government might fill this vacuum and do it instead. But if Gogoro can launch this scooter at a competitive price, and convince consumer that its battery swapping network is solid, it might not need the help of the government in the first place.  

The post Gogoro Opening Retail Store in Taipei Ahead of Summer Launch appeared first on VR World.

Hello, how are you?

Yes, it is me, the guy who decided to get out of all the CPU or GPU tests and reviews almost a decade ago. And do I feel regret? Can’t I wait to jump right back into it like Michael Schumacher, God bless him, when he returned to F1 with rather mixed results? Trust me, and please believe me I don’t mean to offend anyone, but the days of motherboard reviews and sleepless nights spent trying and testing the latest and greatest PC components are gone for good.

Funny as it is, time has not stood still in the last eight years, since I finally turned my back on Tom’s Hardware, oh yes, with money in my pocket, yet that wasn’t and couldn’t have been the reason why I was oh-so tired of it all. True enough, there are still those who care about a new chipset, new motherboards, new graphics cards, even overclocking, but the numbers have dwindled and why? Because the PC is dying, along with it the notebook, go figure!

We are running out of excuses for building or buying a new PC system, a new motherboard, a juicier power supply and even a new graphics card. What is so power hungry that would justify the pain, the expense and the time spent on such a project? The latest computer game? Yes, for years that was the one last stand for the power users, but let’s be honest, how many really good games have been released in recent years? Do we really want to sink tons of money into the hottest new components, just to be bored to tears by yet another first person shooter with yet even greater graphics, but a thin or even idiotic story, or a totally dissatisfying end?

So what are we looking at today? Oh yes, there would be this company named Apple. It came out with the greatest gift to man, the first ever true smart phone. Boy did that revolutionise the world, hasn’t it? Today, years later, we are at the nth reiteration of the iPhone, we acknowledge the iPad, we look at all the Android devices, but do we still feel the excitement we experienced when 3dfx, long gone but not forgotten, released Voodoo2? Do you remember that time? Oh how pathetic it looks today, but weren’t we blown away back then? Are we shaking in excitement the same way over the iWatch, or Nvidia’s latest addition to the world or 3D-graphics? Not really, right?

Much has happened in my life in the last eight years. Today, I am the husband to a beautiful wife and the father of an amazing 6-month old boy. Family life has got me in its grip, and I would not want to have it any other way.  You know what upsets my little son the most? It’s mommy or daddy reaching for and staring into their smartphone, instead of giving him the attention he wants as well as deserves. Oh yes, I am a smartphone addict like the next man, but little Ciarán’s disdain for this device made me realise that this cannot possibly the future of mankind.

It makes us antisocial assholes – thank you so much Apple – and if we should believe that our future might go along the lines of the Terminator movies, then becoming antisocial would have to be the first step of humanity losing what it takes to differentiate itself from and be better than ‘the machines’. I am not gonna be a daddy who hands his child an iPad once he turns one and a half years old. I made that oath, and believe me, I am still as technology savvy and hungry as you remember me, but not at any price!

People asked me to talk about how the PC and other technology business evolved to what we are looking at today, but I better be careful, feeling a little bit of an outsider who hasn’t been invited to the hush-hush back rooms, the trade shows or intimate dinners with vendors for a long time. What I can see is Samsung going to produce everything, and the kitchen sink soon, focusing along with other Asian producers on creating yet the best copy of something invented by somebody else. I see Intel apparently busy digging its own grave, Microsoft also somewhat out of wits, the Taiwanese producers, Asus et al., concentrating on squeezing the last little bit of margin, so they can continue selling their stuff just that little bit cheaper once again, and Apple predominantly concentrating on making money, rather than creating something the world is really waiting for.

My dear friend Anthony, fellow dedicated daddy as well as technology editor, suggested I should write about VR and I would love to. When it comes to gaming, it seems to be the next big thing. However, I haven’t played with it yet, so who am I to comment? I’ll get my hands on one of those funky devices as soon as possible though, and I can’t wait sharing Anthony’s genuine excitement about this technology, … or not.

I have the request to give my view of what things will be like in 2030, and what to tell your child now in preparation for our glorious future. I used to be asked that kind of question a lot in bygone times, and my answer was always the same – I ain’t no oracle! I was just about to go there and embarrass myself, but the word count of my article made me reconsider, so why not wrap things up by speaking about the current state of computer journalism? Has it evolved, improved, withered? Well the landscape has changed, hasn’t it?

It feels very much as if all the good guys are gone, while the bad ones still remain. It has become more and more popular rewording press releases rather than doing research, hard work and arriving at one’s own point of view. I wish I could say why. If you allow me taking a wild guess, I would say it has plenty to do with balls versus greed. If it is money that you are after in this business, you cannot possibly say you’re searching for ‘the truth’ or ‘justice’ or – modestly – ‘the best interest of your reader’, can you? What it takes is drive, ambition, a certain level of fearlessness and inspiration. You have that and the money will come by itself. Just watch it arrive, nod if you have to and continue with your mission.

I have joined a team of people with ambition, balls and the determination to provide quality. I would not be writing this, would I not firmly believe in it. I never wanted to return to publishing, because it is a rather ugly business. However, things are going to change, and I have my own little idea how the publishing of old will be turned into something brand new and very exciting.

I have enjoyed writing this, certainly not exactly ground breaking or overly meaningful little piece and I can’t wait getting back into the scene and mixing things up my way. Give me a chance to assimilate all that I might have missed before I can give any kind of fundamental guidance. I’ll be there.

Tom’s back, for better or worse.

The post Thomas Pabst: Is the Computing Business Getting Boring? appeared first on VR World.

In the last few years the Asia-Pacific area has revealed itself to be fertile ground for two-wheeled electric vehicles, with almost 45 million units sold by 2012 and and an expected 50% increase by 2018.

Unlike in the two other world’s biggest markets of Western Europe and North America, where electric vehicles are most seen as an expensive way of life, in Asia electric powered vehicles are seen as a practical and cheap alternative for daily commuting. China alone became has been the world frontrunner since 1995 becoming the largest electric two-wheeler manufacturer and exporter, accounting for 92 % of the global market with four times more e-bikes than cars.

“Chinese people love bicycles and now they’ve become electric‏,” Shenta Tsai, Chief Technology Officer for Mobipus Technology, an electric powertrain company, said to VR World. “A few customers of mine in China, they produce from 1 to 4 million electric scooter per year   99% of electric scooter’s motor are made in China, about 95% of their controllers and ‏ 98% of the frames and plastic are also from there.”

However in neighboring Taiwan, a country with the highest scooter density in the world, adherence to the transition to electric transportation has been far from hasty. Though it has almost 15 million scooters for 23 million inhabitants, only 122,500 scooters are electric.

If there is a good place to check the feasibility of electric scooters that place is Taiwan as two-wheel vehicles are completely omnipresent and an essential part of daily life mostly petrol powered ones.

As with other Eastern Asian metropolis, the city of Taipei is in a basin which traps all the air pollution produced by high levels of petrol motorcycles emissions.  However, this high dependence on scooters can be an advantage and a disadvantage to the inclusion of environment-friendly solutions.

“The traditional gasoline scooter in Taiwan is one of cheapest forms of transportation in the world.” says Azizi Tucker, former region supplier development in Asia for Tesla Motors and currently VP of Engineering at LMD Racing and Owner of Sketch to SKU, an engineering consulting company. “Scooters are typically kept for 10 to 15 years and receive only the most minimal service. They use very little gas. As such electric scooters in many ways are very hard to market in Taiwan since the gas scooters are so cheap to the user”.

As an example, Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) implemented a program to support e-scooters in 1998, providing a subsidy of $1000 for each vehicle purchased. Although this reduced the price to be roughly on par with low-powered gasoline models, it failed to stimulate interest when battery-charging infrastructure and general e-scooter performance capabilities were still in their infancy.

For the duration of that particular program, which concluded in 2002, only about 26,000 e-scooters were purchased. New subsidies are in place, but rather than increasing the amount, they have decreased.

Although it managed to reduce the price of an electric motorcycle to that of a gasoline-powered model it didn’t really stimulate demand as not many people became interested in a product where battery-charging infrastructure and autonomy was still not good enough. For the duration of the EPA program, which concluded in 2002,  and only about 26,000 electric motorcycles were purchased.

Creating a fertile market

While some might believe that the industry would struggle after the cessation of the program, this is not the case with Gogoro, a small Taiwanese startup founded in 2011 by ex-HTC engineers (TPE: 2498) managed to raise $150 million in venture capital (a good portion came from HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang) and launched the Smartscooter, an innovative electric scooter.

“Gogoro’s vision was inspired by one of the greatest challenges of our time: How to distribute energy in a smarter way to have the greatest impact on our lives and the lives of future generations,” said a company spokesperson.

Tucker believes Taiwan can finally be at the forefront of the electric motion vanguard.

“Gogoro is a huge advancement for electric scooters. The quality of the design and the performance are a huge step forward compared to the electric scooters on the market now,” he says. “The battery swap is a smart solution to the charging problem. It is especially useful in cities where people do not own garages.”

In Tucker’s view the benefit of going with electric is not short-term, as it helps moving young riders toward electric vehicles as a transportation solution and it can significantly decrease tailpipe emissions.

He states that the gas scooter industry in Taiwan is very highly developed with amazing value for the money with good gas mileage and speed. Nowadays while $0.03 of gasoline keeps a small scooter going for between 1 and 1.5 km, the same amount in electricity allows an e-scooter to run for almost triple the distance.

“Also due to the long life of scooters there are many scooters on the street with older more polluting emissions,” he says. “The industry has been forced to raise prices to support better emissions but that has led to decreased sales. There is not much development since the vehicles are so refined. In short they are well adapted to their environment, but at the same time destructive of the environment.”

Government can help and hinder

However, while in China government regulations have helped stimulate the electric scooter industry, in Taiwan government intervention is still not sufficient or has been misguided.

“The most obvious step for more widespread adoption is government intervention in the form of tax credits, subsidies, or increased tax on gas scooters. It can and should offer subsidizes for electric scooters to allow new manufacturers to get through at least three generations of products,” he told VR World.

Mobipus’ Tsai has a more cynical view of the government’s intervention in the electric vehicle industry.

“Taiwan’s electric scooter market has been framed by the business leaders and cheated by ex-government officials,” he told VR World.‏ “The government subsidizes wrong products for the market and tries to kill the electric scooter by setting up unreasonable regulations and subsidize underpowered, unusable products that make the public feel that electric scooters are not good enough for everyday usage‏‏.”

So although Tsai thinks Gogoro’s idea for power stations is smart he believes it won’t work without government support for acquisition of land needed for battery exchange stations and better incentives for electric technology development startups.

“The Singapore government offered me five years of income tax break, and 10 years 300% R&D expense exemption, plus three years 1% interest start up loans, and offered to invest in my company if I moved the HQ and R&D to Singapore‏,” he claims. “While Taiwan’s government would rather subsidize electric scooter manufactured in China (like e-moving), but not give any help to local Taiwan manufacturers for high-end components for EV‏.”

In some cases it’s also a matter different government approaches, since the Chinese government executive powers are simply more powerful allowing it to simply ban gas scooters in some cities, while in Taiwan’s red tape can sometimes make the process harder.

“I think Taiwan’s electric scooter won’t take off anytime soon but the tip-over point is getting closer as people realize the advantages of EV‏.”

Photo credit: Daniel Spiller

The post Why Aren’t Electric Scooters Taking Off in Taiwan? appeared first on VR World.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Taiwan’s economy industrialized rapidly, by the 1990s becoming a high-income mature economy with a purchasing power parity (PPP) comparable to many first world economies.

Taiwan was able to do this partially because it was in the right place at the right time, but also because it built innovative companies. Taiwanese companies, with the advantage of speaking the same language, were the first into China as it opened up to the world, building with the help of Hong Kong capital, now-famous ODM/OEM firms like Foxconn (TPE: 2354) in Shenzhen, China, and at home in Taiwan the modern PC components industry with giants such as Gigabyte (TPE: 2376), Asus (TPE: 2357) and TSMC (TPE: 2330). These companies are the epitome of innovation; their respective markets didn’t really exist in the years before they were founded.

So it’s troubling when an executive from a Chinese company says that Taiwan must be more innovative and import Chinese thinking if it wants to remain competitive. During a recent Cheetah Mobile — a Chinese mobile app company with a significant presence in Taiwan —  press event in Taipei one of the company’s executives mused on stage that while Taiwan was a very important player during the PC era it lost a lot of opportunities during the mobile era because of the failure of its companies to adapt.

The CEO of Cheetah Mobile made similar comments at an event in Taipei in January, admonishing young Taiwanese for their lack of entrepreneurial drive and innovation in the workplace.

“If you go to any cafe in Zhonggguancun in Beijing, or CBD in Shenzhen, you’ll immediately hear people discussing startups and investments and dreams. In a cafe in Taipei, you’ll rarely hear this,” he is quoted as saying on stage. “Taipei lacks this energy and investment environment. So even if Taiwanese youth have dreams, how can they be fearless? There needs to be a base for fearlessness.”

This is slightly ironic, since a large part of Taiwan’s economic advantage is based on defining itself against China: Taiwanese companies are innovative, contract law is generally respected and the legal system is predictable, there’s a large educated work force to draw from.

But it’s also not incorrect, as even ministers from Taiwan’s government admit that the country is losing its edge. During a November speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, Taiwan’s Chang San-cheng, then the Minister of Science and Technology, called on young Taiwanese to become more innovative pointing out that the hyper-popular local message board PTT (analogous to Reddit in popularity) does not have a business model and relies on the support of a non-profit society.

Taiwan needs to revamp its industry to become more innovative and competitive. This begins at the top with changing the managerial culture to reward productivity, not working the longest, while figuring out how to give the bottom a fighting spirit to make it less complacent. At its best, Taiwan is more than capable of this. While the US Military Industrial Complex is prone to inefficiencies and delays, Taiwanese industry developed a domestic fighter aircraft for a reasonable cost that’s comparable to an F-16.

If Taiwan doesn’t regain its fighting competitive edge the results would be disastrous, pushing the island to economic irrelevance in fields it once dominated it. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to this.

The post When China Lectures Taiwan on Innovation, Something is Wrong appeared first on VR World.

Cheetah Mobile’s (NYSE: CMCM) suite of mobile utility apps — anchored by the CM Security Suite — is not a household name for many outside of China but it should be considering the popularity of its app suite. China’s Cheetah Mobile had an impressive period of growth during the last year, opening an office in Taipei and launching the CM Security Suite — which has beaten better known apps to the 100 million mark in record time.

While Line — a popular instant messaging app in Japan, Taiwan and Southeast Asia — took a year-and-a-half to hit the 100 million mark, and Instagram took just over a year, Cheetah Mobile’s CM Suite his that critical mark in only 357 days and maintains a rating of 4.7 on Google Play. The growth in user data backs this up: according to Fu the company’s user base has grown by 900% since 2013. As of Q3 2014, the company has 340 million active users with 70% from outside China (and a big presence in the US and EU). On Google Play, the CM Security Suite is holding steady at number 3, behind Facebook. Revenue, says Fu, has grown by 140% per year, three years in a row.

At a press event in Taipei, Cheetah Mobile CEO Sheng Fu credited the success of CM Suite to the company’s policy of being hyper-reactive to the needs of customers. He pointed to the frequent updates his company pushes out for CM Security — three per-week — as proof.

While Cheetah Mobile has had success with impressive growth in its user base and revenue, like many Internet companies with a mobile focus sustaining profitability continues to be a concern. Its Q3 2014 earnings came in flat, and analysts were bearish about continued growth prospects in light of increased competition from the likes of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) and Qihoo (NYSE: QIHU). That being said, the stock has been on something of a rally throughout February.

Cheetah Mobile and its CM Security Suite is an impressive achievement in the up and coming market for mobile security apps, as well as cross-strait cooperation in software development. Getting to 100 million downloads so quickly is a testament to the quality of its products. However, China’s internet industry is not immune to the bubbles that have frequently popped in the US meaning that Cheetah Mobile will have to work hard to sustain such impressive growth in the future.

Photo caption: Executives from Cheetah Mobile’s Beijing and Taipei offices at a press event in Taipei’s Beitou suburb. 

The post Cheetah Mobile Hits 100 Million Downloads With CM Security Suite appeared first on VR World.

HTC (TPE: 2498) and Samsung (KRX: 005930) both introduced its new low-cost mid-tier smartphones to Taiwan on Feb. 9.

HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone maker, introduced the Desire 626, which is equipped with a 5-inch HD 720p display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage capacity, a 13-megapixel main camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera and 4G LTE connectivity.

HTC North Asia President Jack Tong (董俊良) described Desire 626 as a feature-rich model at a low price. Without revealing the deal date for its debut, Tong said that the new mid-tier smartphone will be available later this month at US$190 each, and it will target budget-conscious and young consumers.

“We hope that our total sale volume and market share will see significant growth this year,” Tong said.

Tong said that HTC had the highest share in each of the US$483-US$645, US$322-US$483 and US$161-US$322 phone segments in Taiwan last year, and that the company is planning to extend its success to the lower price band this year. He said that HTC is targeting a 25% share of the sub-US$161 phone segment in 2015, which will translate into an estimated 375,000 units of phone sales for HTC and boost the company’s overall market share in Taiwan by 5%.

Samsung Galaxy E7 (Photo Courtesy of Samsung)

For Samsung, HTC’s Korean rival, the new Galaxy E7 is the weapon to compete with HTC’s Desire 626.

The Galaxy E7 is Samsung’s first mid-range smartphone which comes along with a 5.5-inch display and a price tag of US$317.

The E7 also marks Samsung’s latest foray into the sub-US$322 price band, as Taiwanese smartphones priced between US$161 and US$322 accounted for about 33% of total sales last year, up from 24%.

“Samsung is a pioneer of 5.5-inch smartphones,” said Andy Tu (杜偉昱), general manager for Samsung Taiwan’s mobile communication team. “We are aiming to provide a full range of products before the Lunar New Year holiday.”

In addition to the Galaxy E7, Samsung also introduced the Galaxy E5 and the Galaxy Grand Max. The 5.25-inch Grand Max will go on sale later this month at US$257, while the price of the 5-inch E5 will be announced at a later date.

The post HTC and Samsung Introduce Mid-Tier Smartphones to Taiwan appeared first on VR World.

Google Taiwan (NASDAQ: GOOGL) launched a tutorial and training program – the Digital Mars Initiative – to help college graduates hook up with local companies and eventually get hired.

“Why ‘Digital Mars Initiative?’ The name ‘Mars’ came into the picture because these ‘Martians’ think differently with more innovative and new ideas and we are helping them to get into the digital marketing field,” said Stanley Chen (陳俊廷), Google Taiwan’s country director.

Chen made his remarks during a press conference at Google Taiwan’s headquarters on Feb. 5. During previous conversations with Google’s vendors, Chen said, he has often heard complaints that employers had hard time recruiting the right talents while college graduates had a hard time getting hired, because what they have learned on the campus may not be the advantage for them to be recruited.

“We decided to offer the chance to help, train and recruit these young men and help our friends in different industries find their right employees at the same time,” Chen said.

Chen said that the 60 companies in 13 industries participated in the program and offered up to 170 vacancies in marketing, gaming, e-commerce and mass communications, while the average monthly paycheck for these jobs would fall between US$967 and US$1,451. The “Digital Mars Initiative” is the largest talent recruiting project across the Asia-Pacific region, Chen said, and is aiming to help at least 2,000 Taiwanese college graduates by the end of this year.

Those who register online will receive free courses by Google, including digital marketing and keyword advertising – the Good Adwords.  After they complete the courses, Google will also offer chances for them to be certified.

“Google is optimistic about the potential and competitive advantage of the Taiwanese workforce and will continue to strengthen local young people’s abilities through diverse and long-term talent cultivation projects,” said Google Taiwan Managing Director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰).

The post Google Taiwan Lanches “Digital Mars Initiative” appeared first on VR World.

Siemens AG’s (ETR: SIE) Taiwan branch said that its revenue this year will grow at a similar rate as Taiwan’s economy.

“We are aiming to grow on average at least as much as the country’s GDP is growing. That’s our target,” said Erdal Elver, president and chief executive officer for Siemens Taiwan.

Elver made his remarks during a year-end press conference in Taipei. Taiwanese government and several economic research organizations predicted that Taiwan’s GDP for 2015 should fall between 3.28% and 3.6%. Elver said that Siemens recorded a revenue growth rate last year that was “similar” to Taiwan’s economic growth of 3.51%, but he did not give an exact figure.

Elver said that Siemens’ global business has made substantive progress in the intensely competitive international environment, with its new orders reaching US$88.9 billion and revenues totaling US$81.5 billion for the fiscal year of 2014.

Siemens’ revenues for 2014, Elver said, increased 1% from the previous fiscal year of 2013, as the company registered the net income of

The company registered net income of US$6.3 billion, an increase of 25% from the fiscal year of 2013. Elver said that Siemens Taiwan will continue to promote its “Grow Taiwan Together” initiative and provide solutions in key areas such as sustainable energy, future of manufacturing and intelligent urban infrastructure.

“Siemens Taiwan continues to embrace its commitment to Taiwan and strives to forge a sustainable future for Taiwan’s energy and industrial sectors,” Elver said.

In the area of smart manufacturing, Elver said, Siemens is introducing digital factory and advanced manufacturing concepts to Taiwan with the focus on integrating the entire industrial value chain on both the digitalization and automation levels.

“This will significantly boost flexibility and efficiency for Taiwanese manufacturers in product development while shortening the time needed for these products to reach the market,” Elver said.

The post Siemens Taiwan Vows to Grow ‘as Taiwan’s Economy’ appeared first on VR World.

A latest survey said on Jan. 30 that approximately 87% of employers in Taiwan, foreign and domestic, will offer year-end bonuses to their employees this year.

The poll was conducted by the 1111 Job Bank while a total of 540 employers in Taiwan participated in the questionnaire. Approximately 86.53% of them said that they have prepared related year-end bonuses to their employees and will issue them before the Lunar New Year, which will fall on Feb. 19 this year.

Statistics of the annual survey by the 1111 Job Bank showed that approximately 94.72% of employers in Taiwan said that they were offering year-end bonuses in 2006, and the figure continued to go down until this year. The job bank said that the higher percentage of those employers who are willing to offer the year-end bonuses reflected a recovery in both domestic and global economy.

Prior to the survey, the government released an advance estimate earlier, saying that that Taiwan’s GDP grew 3.51% last year, beating its previous forecast of a 3.43% increase.

Due to an improvement in earnings, the survey discovered that most employers will issue year-end bonuses equivalent to 1.34 months of monthly paychecks on average, up from 1.33 months which was seen a year earlier. The figure was a high since 2011, when the average year-end bonuses equaled 1.41 months of salary.

Quoting the survey, the job bank said that 17.4% of the employers who will issue bonuses said that their employees are expected to get higher year-end bonuses this year. In the meantime, 56% of the employers said that they will issue bonuses based on employee performances, while 31.1% of them said that they will take seniority into consideration.

Among all the various industries, the survey said, the manufacturing sector, which has got a boost from rising global demand, will offer the most amount year-end bonuses to their employees, followed by the financial sector and the services sector.

The job bank said, however, the year-end bonuses to be issued by the property development sector will lag behind these three sectors as the local housing market has been sluggish. Employees from the property sector, however, have enjoyed the fattest checks for their year-end bonuses last year, the job bank said.

The post About 87% of the Employers in Taiwan Will Offer Their Employees Year-end Bonus This Year: Survey appeared first on VR World.

A latest survey released by the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT) said on Jan. 29 that it will become more and more difficult for companies to recruit quality employees in Taiwan, due to slow wage increases.

Michael Page Salary and Employment Forecasts, an annual survey by ECCT, said that Taiwan’s job market has been underperforming if it is compared with those developed Asian economies.

The survey showed that there are many technology firms for innovation in Taiwan, and these high-tech companies continue to hire and recruit talents in fields of design, research and development, but, a serious brain drain also continued to affect Taiwan as the nation has experienced very little wage inflation during the past decades.

“Companies — in particularly high-tech companies — from China, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as other locations around the world including California, have targeted Taiwanese talent,” said Chris Preston, regional director of Michael Page Taiwan. “Because salaries in Taiwan have been stagnant in recent years, Taiwanese people who go abroad for their careers know that they will need to take a pay cut if they decide to return to Taiwan,” Preston said.

In Taiwan, 65% of surveyed employers expect to offer salary increases of between 1% and 5% in the coming year, in line with Hong Kong. In China, however, 61% of surveyed employers plan to offer salary increases of between 6% and 10%, as Chinese employers are willing to pay top paychecks to the best employees and offer more moderate pay rises for average employees, according to the survey.

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Taiwan was ranked the 14^th in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom for 2015, which was three notches up from a year earlier.

The foundation said that Taiwan scored 75.1 points in the 2015 index, up 1.2 from a year earlier, to take 14th place among the 186 countries in the world covered by this year’s index, up from the 17th in 2014. Taiwan’s score in the index has improved since 2009 and hit a new high this year.

In the Asia Pacific region, Taiwan was ranked as the fifth among the 42 countries that were covered, following Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia, while Taiwan’s score was well above the world average.

Among the 10 sub-indexes in the Index of Economic Freedom, Taiwan made improvements in seven categories, including investment freedom, government size/spending, labor freedom, freedom from corruption, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, and monetary freedom.

In the meantime, Taiwan’s performance was unchanged in two other categories — property rights and financial freedom — and it slipped in the category of business freedom although Taiwan still managed to rank eighth in the world in the category.

“Prudent macroeconomic policy within a stable legal and monetary environment has been the key to rising levels of economic freedom over the past five years,” the Heritage Foundation wrote in its summary of Taiwan’s results. “Commitment to structural reforms and openness to global commerce have enabled Taiwan to advance far into the ‘mostly free’ category.”

The foundation said that Taiwan’s efficient business environment received a boost from a low corporate tax rate and the nation’s efforts in eliminating minimum capital requirements for incorporating a company. The foundation said, however, that Taiwan still faces threats to its overall economic freedom from a relatively high level of perceived corruption and a rigid labor market.

For other Asian nations or regions, Hong Kong remained on the top of the economic freedom rankings although its overall score fell 0.5 points to 89.6. Meanwhile, Singapore checked in the second with a score of 89.4 points, followed by New Zealand with 82.1 points, Australia with 81.4 points, and Switzerland’s 80.5 points.

Japan was ranked the 20th with a score of 73.3 points, and South Korea finished in the 29th place with a score of 71.5. China scored 52.7 points to be ranked as the 139th.

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Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said on Jan. 28 that Taiwan is one of the top five markets for its app store by revenue.

“It was not a surprise to see three Asian markets in the top-five list given the high smartphone penetration rates in these countries, which in turn leads to strong demand for mobile games,” said Chris Yerga, vice president of engineering and head of Google Play in Asia Pacific. “The top five Google Play markets are in Asia – Taiwan, Japan and South Korea – and the United States also was part of that group.”

Yerga, however, did not elaborate the fifth market or give the specific rankings of the top five, saying only that the figures were not for public consumption.

Google Play, originally the Android Market, is a digital distribution platform operated by Google. It also serves as the official app store for the Android system on mobile devices, that users are able to browse, download, and purchase specific applications developed with the Android SDK and published through Google.

Google Play has more than one million free and paying apps and over 50 billion downloads today, while it was launched as the official app store for Google’s Android operating system in 2012. Google Play offered music, games, magazines, books, movies and television programs. Google Play’s game services received 100 million new users between January and June last year, making it the fastest-growing mobile gaming network of all time.

A poll by the Institute for Information Industry which was released last December revealed that 13.55 million Taiwanese users aged over 12 had a smartphone during the last six months last year, representing 65.4% of Taiwan’s 12 and over population. That was up from a smartphone penetration rate of 58.7% during the first six months last year.

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Xiaomi’s newly launched 5.7-inch flagship smartphone – Mi Note – seemed to help boost several Taiwanese contractors’ business.

On Jan. 15, Xiaomi unveiled the Mi Note flagship smartphone that features ultra-slim design, a more powerful processor, improved cameras and better display resolution.

Priced at US$412 for the Mi Note Pro and US$372 for the Mi Note in China, the former sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chipset, 4GB of RAM, and a quad HD display, while the latter is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM, and a full HD display. The Chinese smartphone maker also touted the fact that unlike the iPhone 6 variants, the rear camera sits flush with the phone’s body, and does not protrude like the American flagship.

“The newly debuted flagship model is evidence of Xiaomi’s strategy to expand its product portfolio in 2015,” said Jasmine Lu (呂智穎), a Taipei-based analyst with Morgan Stanley. “Competition is intensifying in China and overseas expansion will take time to bear fruit, but we believe Xiaomi can still outgrow peers via a broader mix.”

Lu, meanwhile, estimated that Xiaomi will begin its mass production of the Mi Note sometime in February or March, with shipments forecast to total eight million to 10 million units during the whole product cycle.

Xiaomi sold a total of 61.12 million units of smartphones in 2014.

The analyst said that FIH Mobile (HKG: 2038), a unit for Taiwanese contract electronics maker Foxconn Technology Group (TPE: 2354) and one of Xiaomi’s suppliers, will benefit from a higher average selling price for casings and will gain about 50% of the assembly orders.

“This means that Xiaomi is expected to contribute around 13% of FIH’s total revenue in 2015 and more than 45% of its gross profits this year,” she said.

Lu also named FIH and Hong Kong-listed AAC Technologies Holdings Inc (HKG: 2018), the main sources of Xiaomi’s acoustic and RF solutions, as the top two picks in Xiaomi’s supply chain and maintained an “overweight” rating on both stocks.

One of the Mi Note’s highlights is its 13-megapixel rear camera equipped with Sony’s IMX214 sensor. The Note’s camera selection represents a potential boon to a lot of Taiwanese suppliers, including Sunnic Technology and Merchandise, a partnering distributor of Sony (TYO: 6758) parts and modules, camera lens maker Largan Precision (TPE: 3008), camera module makers Primax Electronics (TPE: 4915) and Lite-On Technology (TPE: 2301), and electronic manufacturing service provider Inventec (TPE: 2356).

Display panel suppliers Wintek (TPE: 2384) and TPK (TPE: 3673), however, will not be included in the list of Taiwanese companies set to benefit from Xiaomi’s phablet sales although these two screen and touch panel manufacturers have been Xiaomi’s partners since 2013, now that Xiaomi decided to commission Japanese competitors Japan Display (TYO: 6740) and Sharp (TYO: 6753) for the job.

In order to achieve the Mi Note’s 7-mm thickness, which is 0.1-mm thinner than the iPhone 6 Plus, Xiaomi had adopted the in-cell touch display technology made by the Japan Display and Sharp, over TPK’s touch-on-lens and Wintek’s on-glass-solution.

Xiaomi observed a sales drop during the fourth quarter last year. The sales drop was related to its then-supplier Wintek’s being beleaguered by ailing financial condition and is in the midst of a restructuring process. The Taiwan-based touch panel maker supplied touch panels for both Apple and Xiaomi. In an attempt to vie more orders, Wintek invested large sums of funds to increase its production yield. Much of the funds were used to build new facilities in Dongguan, China, and Vietnam. The much lower-than-expected demand for touch panels, combines with competition from Chinese rivals, however, caused Wintek great losses on assets. Wintek filed a petition to the court last October for seeking business restructuring.

The announcement surprised many of its clients, including Xiaomi, which was also forced to find a new touch panel supplier. With a new supplier, it also took more time for quality control and to increase capacity, which also affected Xiaomi’s smartphone shipments for the fourth quarter last year.

Xiaomi’s smartphone sales took a plunge by four million units during the fourth quarter last year following Wintek’s restructuring announcement in October.

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The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) raised its projection for Taiwan’s economic growth in 2015 on Jan. 26.

TIER, the Taipei-based private research organization, said that improving global economy and a better outlook on domestic consumption can be expected in Taiwan, due to plunging oil prices. TIER said that the nation’s GDP can be expected to grow 3.67% this year, up 0.19 percentage points over its previous forecast set in November.

“The revision is primarily because of the recent decline in international crude oil prices, which could help boost Taiwan’s domestic consumption growth to 2.71% this year, up 0.24 percentage points over TIER’s previous forecast in November,” said Gordon Sun (孫明德), director of TIER’s Macroeconomic Forecasting Center.

Although the nation’s economy as well as the global economy are and will continue to improve and be rebooted which will be led by a strong recovery in the U.S., Sun warned that there will still be uncertainties in Taiwan’s trade and export outlook over 2015 because of weak demand in Europe and China.

TIER’s new GDP estimate was slightly lower than the data from another local leading economic think tank, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research. The institution forecast in December that Taiwan’s GDP will grow 3.5% in 2015, up from the 3.43% growth which was expected in 2014.

Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institution, said in last December that the nation’s GDP growth could edge lower to 3.38% in 2015 from the 3.42% it expected for 2014, because of slowing economic growth in China, leading to weaker demand for Taiwanese exports and a potential drop in investment.

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HTC (TPE: 2498) said on Jan. 21 that that company is planning to expand its distribution network and improve its brand image this year.

The Taiwanese smartphone maker said that the domestic market will be its priority in 2015.

“The 2015 is crucial to HTC because the company is set to offer a full range of products from entry-level to mid-tier and top-of-the-line phones,” said Jack Tong (董俊良), president of HTC North Asia. “HTC everywhere is our slogan for this year.”

Tong said that HTC is working on the expansion plans of its Taiwanese distribution partners to increase the total number of HTC stores in 2015. The expansion plans were expected to boost HTC’s brand image and promote the company’s products to more local consumers.

“Our new vision for brand is to expand HTC’s reach to everywhere,” he said.

As of now, Tong said, HTC has teamed up with 19 local distributors to run a total of 72 direct stores that only sell HTC products. He said that the number of HTC direct stores in Taiwan will reach 100 in 2015, with sales from the stores expected to double from last year.

In the meantime, Tong also said that the expansion plan is based on his estimate that retail stores will account for up to 40% of Taiwan’s overall smartphone sales this year from 20% last year, fueled by a shorter replacement cycle and more offerings of feature-rich phones at low prices.

As of 2011, HTC primarily released and marketed its smartphones under the HTC brand, and was ranked as the 98^th top brand on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2011 report. In September 2013, HTC was stated that its share of the global smartphone market was less than 3% and its stock price has fallen by 90% since 2011.

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Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau said on Jan. 20 that the daily quota for Chinese visitors under the Free Independent Traveler (FIT) program will likely be raised to 5,000 from the current 4,000 before the Lantern Festival that will fall on March 5 this year.

“The bureau has urged authorities across the Taiwan Strait to increase the quote because of greater demand from Chinese visitors as independent individuals, instead of following a tour group,” said David Hsieh (謝謂君),director-general for the bureau.

The Taiwan Tourism Association (TTA) quoted its latest statistics and said that approximately 1.17 million of more than 3 million Chinese visitors who came to Taiwan last year carried out their trips under the FIT program. TTA Chairwoman Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said she was hoping that more foreign tourists, Chinese visitors especially, could have the opportunity to visit this year’s Lantern Festival.

In response, Hsieh said that the government would be glad to see more Chinese visitors in Taiwan via the FIT program. Hsieh said that the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association and China’s Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange, government bodies across the Strait that negotiate tourism issues that concerns Chinese visitors, will continue to discuss the possibility of raising the quota.

Statistics compiled by the Tourism Bureau showed that the total daily amount of Chinese individual visitors averaged between 3,700 and 3,900 last year, and even exceeded 4,000 in November and December.

“The figure for January could also top 4,000,” Hsieh said.

The FIT program was launched in June 2011. Those Chinese citizens from 36 cities can visit Taiwan under the program. Hsieh said that Taiwan and China are also likely to organize talks around the Lunar New Year holidays regarding potential proposals to add another 10 cities to the FIT program.

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Taiwan’s central bank said on Jan. 16 that Chinese yuan-denominated remittances from Taiwanese banks at the end of December last year rose about 44% from a month earlier, amid warming business ties across the Taiwan Strait.

Quoting its latest statistics, the central bank said that the Chinese yuan remittances through Taiwanese domestic banking units and offshore banking units totaled US$51.46 billion at the end of last December, which was up 44.18% from the end of last November.

In addition to an increase in business exchanges, analysts said that the launch of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect trading platform in last November also sped up the pace for local investors to move funds denominated in the Chinese yuan overseas in order to buy stocks in Shanghai. The stock link is a mechanism through which foreign investors are able to trade Chinese A-shares in Hong Kong, and investors in Shanghai can trade Hong Kong shares in China.

The Chinese yuan remittances through local banks’ domestic banking units at the end of last December rose US$9.7 billion from a month earlier to US$25 billion, while the Chinese yuan remittances through local banks’ offshore banking units reached US$15.2 billion, up US$2.47 billion from a month ago, central bank’s statistics showed.

The central bank said that the balance of Chinese yuan-denominated deposits taken by Taiwanese banks at the end of last December reached US$37.78 billion, up about 0.55% from the end of last November. It was the third month that Taiwanese banks witnessed their Chinese yuan deposits growing less than 1% month-on-month.

Analysts said that the reduced interest in the Chinese currency reflected expectations of a stronger U.S. dollar, which led investors to the greenback. The slower growth was also attributed to banks failing to come up with new promotion campaigns to lure funds to Chinese yuan savings accounts.

Chinese yuan deposits taken by Taiwanese banks’ offshore banking units at the end of last December totaled US$30.88 billion, up US$58 million from a month earlier, while Chinese yuan deposits received by local banks’ offshore banking units rose about US$150 million from a month earlier to US$6.9 billion.

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Xiaomi said on Jan. 15 that the Mi Note, its brand smartphone with a 5.7-inch screen, will be available in Taiwan as soon as the second quarter.

In addition to Taiwan’s market, Mi Note is also facing direct competition from Apple’s iPhone 6 series as well as other phone-tablet hybrid handsets of similar size in both China and Taiwan. Despite the announcement of the plan to introduce Mi Note to Taiwan during the second quarter, Xiaomi, however, did not reveal more details of a specific date or even the price for the new handset.

Mi Note is regarded as a high-end device, that will come along with a 5.7-inch full-HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel real camera, a 4-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3,000mAh battery and dual-SIM 4G LTE connectivity. The brand new smartphone will be sold at US$287 each for the 16G model and US$362 each for the 64G model when it is introduced to China’s market this March, Xiaomi said.

Mi Note Pro, a higher-end smartphone, is also introduced at the same time, while it will be sold at US$412 each for the 64G model. It will feature hardware improvements such as a 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor, a quad-HD display, 4GB of RAM and LTE download speeds of up to 450 mega-bits per second.

Xiaomi has been recognized as “China’s Apple” since it was founded in 2010, while most of its smartphones’ features are very similar to its iPhone counterparts. The Beijing-based phone maker sells low-cost feature-rich phones, including the flagship Mi series and low-end Redmi models, and has teamed up with many Taiwanese suppliers such as Foxconn Technology Group (TPE: 2354) and Inventec Corp (TPE: 2356).

Canalys, a market research firm, said that during the second quarter of 2014, Xiaomi overtook Samsung Electronics Co (KRX: 005930) as China’s top smartphone maker for the first time, holding a 14% share. Samsung and Apple, the only international vendors in the top 10, together accounted for a 18 percent share of the world’s largest smartphone market, Canalys said without disclosing individual market share for Samsung and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). IDC ranked Xiaomi as the world’s third-largest smartphone maker in the third quarter of 2014. Meanwhile, Xiaomi expects to ship 100 million smartphones this year, a leap from 61.1 million last year.

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China’s Cheetah Mobile Inc (NYSE: CMCM) CEO Fu Sheng (傅盛) announced a plan to set up a US$3.13 million program to fund Taiwanese startup companies in the mobile Internet business.

“It is time for Taiwan to deploy and integrate more resources to catch the tail end of the mobile Internet era, now that Taiwan almost missed it,” Fu said. “The program could start in the first quarter as the earliest.”

Fu made his remarks during the cross-strait Mobile Internet Conference in Taipei. He said that business ideas that may become a market trend in three to five years will be welcomed to the funding program, while participating startup companies will stand a better chance for potential strategic partnerships with Cheetah or even Xiaomi.

“We have been looking for talents and new business opportunities from Taiwan’s counterparts, and hope that the fund will break geographical barriers between us,” Fu said.

Fu said that his company sees Taiwan as an attractive place to recruit and develop talent because manpower costs here are cheaper than in Beijing.
 Taiwan also has a sizable pool of engineering talent with good English skills that is more internationally savvy than their peers in China.

Cheetah’s funding program, Fu said, will aim to mentor rather than just provide cash to help young Taiwanese talents establish their own business.

“It does not mean we will control any specific startup company although the money comes from us,” Fu said. “It is an investment, not a merger or acquisition.”

Echoing Fu, Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun (雷軍), who is also a cofounder of Cheetah Mobile, said that Taiwanese who wish to establish their own businesses should focus on mobile Internet and smart home devices.

“Many of my Taiwanese friends have complained that they are constrained by Taiwan’s rather limited market, but if you launch a mobile application on Google Play or Apple Store, you have the global market,” Lei said.

Lei said that he would foresee smart home devices that link to personal handheld devices via cloud computing will be the major market trend within next five years.

“Xiaomi is also working on it. But, to be honest, I have not seen many Taiwanese manufacturers working on this,” Lei said.

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