Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), the world’s largest PC vendor, is the top foreign buyer of Taiwanese products this year, having acquired more than US$10 billion worth of products made by Taiwanese companies, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
While the ministry declined to disclose HP’s exact purchasing figure, the US-based consumer electronics giant said the company’s purchases this year rose more than 10 percent from the US$25 billion recorded last year.
In a ceremony held by the ministry on Friday, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) awarded prizes to honor the largest foreign buyers of Taiwanese goods.
HP said the company is planning to make annual purchases of about US$30 billion from Taiwan over the next two years, while the high-tech firm aims to hire more than 100 employees in the country.
The company said it remained upbeat about the local economy.
After HP, Japan’s Toshiba also made purchases of more than US$10 billion in Taiwan last year, ranking as the second-largest foreign buyer, the ministry said.
US-based PC vendor Dell, Japanese consumer electronics supplier Sony and PC vendor Lenovo Group (聯想) of China took the third, fourth and fifth-largest foreign buyer titles this year by acquiring more than US$7.5 billion worth of Taiwanese products each, the ministry said.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which ranked fourth last year, dropped out of the top-five list, the ministry said.
According to the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), part of the government-sponsored Institute for Information Industry, total purchases of Taiwanese products by foreign information--technology companies totaled almost US$90.2 billion this year, up 5.7 percent from US$85.3 billion last year.
This year’s figure was more than double the US$43 billion recorded 10 years ago, the MIC said.
At the ceremony, the ministry also honored Google, Sony Computer Entertainment Taiwan and Hitachi for their efforts to boost innovation in Taiwan.
Fabless chipmaker Broadcom, handset chipmaker Qualcomm and graphic processing unit maker Nvidia were also honored by the ministry for their purchases from the local semiconductor sector.
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