Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械), the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer, said yesterday the shopping rush for bicycles in some quake-affected areas in Japan will strain the supply of bicycles on the market.
Media reports have said bicycles were sold out in some disaster areas in Japan, including Tokyo.
“The earthquake will definitely increase demand for bicycles for a period of time, but it will also lead to supply problems,” Giant Manufacturing chairman King Liu (劉金標) said on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Taipei International Cycle Show, which will run through Saturday at the Taipei World Trade Center’s Nangang Exhibition Hall.
Photo: Reuters
“The temporary demand is not good for the whole industry and our company because we have operated with the expectation of a balance between the market supply and demand,” he said.
Although Giant is taking emergency measures to increase the bicycle supply to Japan, the company still faces difficulties meeting the heightened demand, Liu said.
Giant sells 1 million bicycles to Japan a year, representing roughly 10 percent of Japan’s annual import of bicycles, he said.
Japan is the fifth-largest export destination for Taiwanese bicycles, accounting for 5.36 percent of exports last year, behind the US (21.45 percent), the Netherlands (13.05 percent), Britain (12.73 percent) and Germany (8.41 percent).
Last year, shipments of Taiwan’s assembled bicycles rose 17.87 percent to 5.07 million units from the previous year, with total revenue growing 20.24 percent to NT$44.25 billion (US$1.5 billion), according to the Bureau of Foreign Trade.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
VALUE: TSMC’s market capitalization far exceeds the combined size of all the Latin American companies on MSCI Inc’s benchmark for emerging markets Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US$420 billion equity rally this year would get a valuation test this week when it reports earnings, with analysts expecting the chipmaker to raise full-year sales forecasts. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker would probably report a 29 percent increase in second-quarter net income on Thursday, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. More importantly, analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Morgan Stanley expect it to also raise its full-year sales guidance, justifying another round of valuation expansion. Just like Nvidia Corp, TSMC has become a favorite artificial intelligence (AI)-bet for investors with
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: The previous shooting targeting a US president or major party candidate was the 1981 incident targeting then-US president Ronald Reagan Saturday’s shooting at former US president Donald Trump’s election rally raises his odds of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory would increase this coming week, investors said yesterday. Trump was shot in the ear during the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday in what the authorities were treating as an assassination attempt. Trump, his face spattered with blood, pumped his fist moments after the attack, and his campaign said he was fine after the incident. Before the shooting, markets had reacted to the prospect of a Trump presidency by pushing the US dollar higher and positioning for a
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday thanked memory chipmaker Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for his trust and continued investment in Taiwan, in a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech executive. It is very unusual for Taiwan’s president to have publicized meetings with senior foreign tech executives, despite the nation being home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), whose chips help to power the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Lai thanked Mehrotra for “showing trust and support for Taiwan” in a video released by the Presidential Office. “I want to thank Micron for its long-term