In recent months, the public faceoff between ride-hailing app Uber Technologies and Taiwanese regulators has at times overshadowed the many ways in which the United States and Taiwan are working together in the digital economy. The collaboration covers a number of digital-economy initiatives first outlined in a Digital Economy Forum held in Washington, D.C. in…
The social-networking juggernaut has a higher penetration rate in Taiwan than anywhere else in the world. When Aaron Turner gets a new wine or beer product, the first channel he uses to promote it is Facebook. The sale of alcohol online is forbidden in Taiwan, but marketing is permitted. That means Turner, the founder and…
Massive fines have forced the popular ride-hailing app to suspend its Taiwan operations from February 10. In Taiwan, the end of the road for Uber came swiftly. The ride-hailing app juggernaut, which is the world’s largest startup by valuation, suspended services here in February after being fined more than NT$1 billion (around US$31 million) in…
So far, regulators have been more concerned about the risks of financial innovation than the rewards. Financial industry observers see big potential for Taiwan in the nascent fintech sector, citing the ways in which emerging technologies could help the banking and insurance components of the nation’s financial conglomerates share information safely and efficiently. A special…
Despite regulatory travails, Alibaba’s C2C e-commerce platform is steadily finding a niche with young, bargain-hunting shoppers. When she wants to shop for clothes, Carrie Chen picks up her smartphone and clicks on the Taobao app. The Chinese e-commerce portal – which is owned and operated by e-commerce giant Alibaba – lists hundreds of thousands of…
As more and more Taiwanese shift to online shopping, traditional merchants are losing business. Not long ago, I visited Taipei’s camera district in search of a Fuji X100T, a compact digital camera capable of producing professional-quality images. The X100T is one of only a few cameras Fuji still manufactures in Japan, and is considered superior…
With casino gaming off the table, the economy of the idyllic offshore islands of Penghu is more dependent than ever on shaky seasonal tourism. Citizens of Penghu County voted decisively in October against introducing casino-gaming resorts. By a lopsided margin of 81% to 19%, Penghu rejected casinos for the second time in seven years, likely…
Korea and China are ahead of Taiwan in developing next-generation OLED display technology, which many expect to supplant LCD displays. Domestic companies will be under pressure to increase R&D expenditures to develop innovative new products and explore new applications. Taiwan’s liquid-crystal display (LCD) panel makers have steadily lost market share to Korean and Chinese competitors…
Restrictions on Chinese investment in the semiconductor sector have failed to stymie budding ties among chipmakers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In January, Powertech Technology announced it would annul a share agreement with Tsinghua Unigroup that would have given the Chinese chipmaker a 25% stake in one of Taiwan’s top semiconductor packaging and…
Recent years have brought scant good news for Taiwan’s LCD panel makers. Once the vanguards of the industry, they have ceded that ground to South Korean and, increasingly, Chinese competitors. Yet the launch of 8K resolution television sets represents a glimmer of hope for the Taiwan panel-making industry. 8K resolution is currently the highest resolution…
