Not to be outdone by Acer Inc (宏碁), which debuted the so-called “world’s thinnest” Ultrabook at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and HTC Corp (宏達電) are aiming to dazzle consumers at the show by unveiling a 7-inch tablet PC and a Windows Phone that runs on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network respectively.
Asustek said it is planning for a second-quarter release for its much-delayed Eee Pad Memo, a tablet that was initially announced at last year’s CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows.
The 7-inch tablet comes with a stylus and has a display with a 1,280x800 resolution and an 8 megapixel camera.
Photo: Reuters
The Memo is equipped with an Nvidia Corp Tegra quad-core processor, 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM and internal storage of up to 32GB and runs on Android 4.0 — codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich.
The retail price is US$249, according to Asustek’s statement.
HTC, meanwhile, unveiled its first Windows Phone, the Titan II, which runs on the high-speed 4G LTE.
The phone will be sold through AT&T Inc, the second-largest mobile provider in the US.
The 4.7-inch Titan II uses Qualcomm Inc’s 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon S2 processor and a 16 megapixel camera, enabling fast Web surfing, streaming and downloading, as well as 720p HD video recording.
HTC said the new smartphone, which uses Microsoft Corp’s Windows Mango Phone operating system, would hit AT&T store shelves within several months, but it did not give any specifics on the product’s release date or pricing.
In related news, HTC yesterday said it has enforced an internal performance examination plan as part of a regular program that could lay off some staff.
“It’s called the ‘Performance Improvement Plan’ and we have run it for many years,” said Annie Lu (盧佳琪), a company spokeswoman.
“Our management can launch this plan at any time it thinks some employees need it. These employees will need to achieve several goals set by the company in three to six months to improve their performance, or they will be laid off,” Lu said.
HTC has told employees with working performance ranking in the lowest 5 to 10 percent in each department to take part in the program for further training, according to the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday.
The paper said HTC hopes to form another growth driver by getting rid of unwanted workers “in a normal and healthy way,” — a measure currently undertaken by many other high-tech firms.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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