■ MOTORCYCLES
Yamaha overtakes KYMCO
Yamaha Motor Taiwan Co (台灣山葉機車) was the top seller of new motorcycles in Taiwan last month, surpassing Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽機車), which stopped offering price promotions and discounts last month amid stiff price competition. Yamaha sold 30,821 new motorcycles last month, up 18.8 percent from a year earlier, helped by strong sales of its 100cc scooters, statistics compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and Kwang Yang showed. Kwang Yang, better known as KYMCO, slid to the No. 3 spot last month with 28,325 new motorcycles sold, down 3.5 percent from a year earlier. The company was the only one among the nation’s three major motorcycle manufacturers that saw its sales decline last month. Sanyang Industry Co (三陽工業), which sells motorcycles under the SYM brand, ranked third last month by selling 26,916 new motorcycles, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier.
■ SMARTPHONES
AT&T testing new BlackBerry
A delayed top-of-the-line BlackBerry phone from Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) is still undergoing testing by AT&T Inc, and RIM’s co-CEO implied that the carrier wanted to avoid the chorus of complaints about performance that greeted the new iPhone this summer. RIM said in May that the BlackBerry Bold 9000 would go on sale this summer. It has gone on sale in some foreign markets, but is still not available in the US, and no date has been announced. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said on Thursday the phone was still undergoing the certification process in which AT&T tests all new handsets to make sure they work well on its wireless network.
■ BEVERAGES
Coke bottler seeks support
Venezuela’s Coca-Cola bottler is seeking government support to end a conflict with former workers that it says has cost some US$5 million in lost sales. Coca-Cola FEMSA de Venezuela SA legal director Rodrigo Anzola says he has met with the president of Venezuela’s national assembly to solicit her help in resolving the conflict. More than 11,000 former employees began blocking plants and distribution centers belonging to the Mexican-owned bottler on Wednesday. They say the company owes them US$520 million in social security payments.
■ PETROLEUM
Myanmar oil, gas deal inked
A Vietnamese company has signed a deal to explore for offshore oil and gas in Myanmar, a state news report in Yangon said yesterday. The Petrovietnam Exploration Production Corp Ltd, Joint Venture Vietsovpetro and a private Burmese company, Eden Group Company Ltd, signed a contract on Friday for exploration, drilling and production of oil and gas in the Gulf of Martaban, the Myanma Ahlin daily reported.
■ AVIATION
AirAsia exploring options
AirAsia, the region’s largest low-cost carrier, said yesterday it is exploring “various options,” following a newspaper report that it may soon be privatized. “We have continuously been exploring various options at both shareholders and company level,” group deputy chief executive officer Kamarudin Meranum told reporters. “There is nothing to confirm at the moment,” he said in response to the report in business newspaper the Edge. “[AirAsia] has generated a lot of interest but there has always been skepticism about its business model from investors looking at short term returns,” the weekly cited an unnamed source as saying.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
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