Wistron Corp (緯創), an assembler of Apple Inc iPhones, yesterday approved a capital injection of US$33.5 million at its after-sales subsidiary in India so that it can build a smart devices plant for the Indian market.
“It will be Wistron’s first wholly owned plant in the country,” a Wistron investor relations official said by telephone.
Wistron has a coinvested smartphone plant with India’s Optiemus Infracom Ltd in the state of Uttar Pradesh with a production capacity of 600,000 smartphones per month.
The Uttar Pradesh plant’s clients include Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電) and China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動), according to Indian media reports.
Wistron’s decision to expand its manufacturing capacity by setting up a wholly owned plant shows that it is optimistic about India’s growing domestic market.
The smartphone penetration rate is still less than 30 percent in India, making it one of the most attractive markets in the world, according to International Data Corp data.
The official said the wholly owned factory, which is to be in Bengaluru, is expected to become operational and enter mass production for a smart-devices client at the end of next quarter at the earliest.
However, the Wistron official said the company could not disclose the production capacity or the number of employees at the plant at client’s request, as it would reveal the scale of production.
KUNSHAN INVESTMENT
On the back of its growing smart devices business, Wistron’s board yesterday also approved a US$11.67 million expansion plan at the company’s smart devices factory in Kunshan, China.
The new plan comes only two months after the board agreed to invest US$2 million to purchase additional equipment for the Kunshan plant in September.
The official said the company would install new equipment to raise the production capacity this quarter.
Wistron expects its smart devices and liquid crystal modules (LCM) businesses, which contributed about 24 percent of its total revenue, to remain its main growth drivers this quarter, the official said.
The official said shipments by the company’s notebook business, which accounted for 40 percent of its total revenue, would decline by between 5 and 10 percent quarter-on-quarter due to the beginning of the traditional slow season.
Wistron’s net income plunged 22.07 percent year-on-year and 16.88 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$512 million (US$16.1 million) last quarter, missing the market consensus estimate of NT$668 million.
The firm attributed the decline to a NT$338 million foreign-exchange loss due to the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar.
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
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
RSS