Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) has voluntarily stopped accepting Airline and Life Networking Tokens (ALLN) — a cryptocurrency — for ticket purchases, due to concerns that doing so could disrupt the market order and lead to a race to the bottom, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said on Friday.
FAT told the Central News Agency that it has stopped using the system, but made no public statement.
The ALLN system, developed by FAT’s parent company, Huafu Enterprise Holdings Ltd (樺福集團), offered passengers discounted tickets as low as 55 percent of the original price, the carrier said.
The system, which was introduced in August last year, has the potential to generate tickets below the regulated minimum price for domestic flight tickets, the CAA said.
It could also create a vicious cycle with airlines pushed into a race to the bottom for cheap tickets on domestic routes, the CAA said.
The ALLN system, which has ambitions to become a leading blockchain-based system for real-world consumption, has another problem, the CAA said.
As a result of its marketing mechanism, FAT could inadvertently report inaccurate financial information, because fluctuations on the virtual currency market mean values stated in ALLN tokens could differ markedly when those tokens are converted into “real” money.
The CAA and Financial Supervisory Commission last year asked FAT to provide detailed information on transaction processes and accounting methods, but the company failed to do so.
FAT, which had about 2,000 tickets purchased using ALLN tokens last year, said that although it is suspending the use of the system, the currency can still be used to purchase tour packages from URTraveller (遠行旅遊), a local travel agency and Huafu subsidiary.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San