Taiwan's Proton Electronic Industrial Corp (普騰) said yesterday it was forming a digital television joint venture with China's No.3 computer maker, Tsinghua Tongfang (清華同方), to tap into the world's fastest-growing TV market.
Proton, a leading TV brand in Taiwan, is scheduled to sign an agreement with the Beijing-based computer vendor on Thursday to sell its own-brand digital TVs to Chinese households, Sylvia Lin (
"We hope the new entity will start to operate some time soon," Lin said. She declined to comment on a Chinese-language media report that the deal was worth US$20 million.
She said the two sides had initially agreed to sell TVs under the joint brand of Tsinghua Tongfang Proton, giving Proton access to the world's most populous market.
The new venture is expected to ship the first batch of TVs during the first half of next year from a factory in Hanzhou, Lin said. The factory will be able to produce 3 million sets a year.
China has become a priority market for Proton and its Taiwanese rivals such as Sampo Corp (
Sampo signed an agreement with Haier (海爾), China's largest home-appliance maker, in February 2002 to sell each other's products and to respect each other's original equipment manufacturing ventures.
"Proton's move is the latest by local TV makers to aggressively expand to overseas markets, especially China," said Helen Chen (
The demand for flat-screen TVs in China is expected to hit 2.05 million this year, or one-fifth of the global demand of 10 million units, according to a research report released by the Taipei-based Topology Research Institute (
The growing demand for high-resolution TVs is a result of Beijing's plan to start extensive digital broadcasts by 2010, the research house said.
Tsinghua Tongfang's move comes following announcements by its bigger rival, Legend Holdings Ltd (
Taiwanese TV makers have been the top choice for Chinese PC makers and home-appliance vendors, but local companies had been reluctant to work with Chinese firms before.
"Now the situation has changed as those Chinese brands have evolved into big names in the TV sector," Lee said.
Anna Bhobho, a 31-year-old housewife from rural Zimbabwe, was once a silent observer in her home, excluded from financial and family decisionmaking in the deeply patriarchal society. Today, she is a driver of change in her village, thanks to an electric tricycle she owns. In many parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa, women have long been excluded from mainstream economic activities such as operating public transportation. However, three-wheelers powered by green energy are reversing that trend, offering financial opportunities and a newfound sense of importance. “My husband now looks up to me to take care of a large chunk of expenses,
SECTOR LEADER: TSMC can increase capacity by as much as 20 percent or more in the advanced node part of the foundry market by 2030, an analyst said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to lead its peers in the advanced 2-nanometer process technology, despite competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, TrendForce Corp analyst Joanne Chiao (喬安) said. TSMC’s sophisticated products and its large production scale are expected to allow the company to continue dominating the global 2-nanometer process market this year, Chiao said. The world’s largest contract chipmaker is scheduled to begin mass production of chips made on the 2-nanometer process in its Hsinchu fab in the second half of this year. It would also hold a ceremony on Monday next week to
TECH CLUSTER: The US company’s new office is in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan US chip designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) yesterday launched an office in Tainan’s Gueiren District (歸仁), marking a significant milestone in the development of southern Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry, the Tainan City Government said in a statement. AMD Taiwan general manager Vincent Chern (陳民皓) presided over the opening ceremony for the company’s new office at the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City (沙崙智慧綠能科學城), a new AI industry base and cybersecurity hub in southern Taiwan. Facilities in the new office include an information processing center, and a research and development (R&D) center, the Tainan Economic Development Bureau said. The Ministry
Nvidia is to open a quantum computing research lab in Boston, where it plans to collaborate with scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said on Thursday. Huang made the announcement at Nvidia’s annual software developer conference in San Jose, California, where the company held a day of events focused on quantum computing. Nvidia added the program after Huang in January said that useful quantum computers are 20 years away, comments that he sought to walk back on Thursday while joined onstage by executives from quantum computing firms. “This is the first event in history
RSS