Consumer price rises
Consumer prices in January rose from a year earlier on strong demand for goods ahead of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, the island's most festive annual celebration, the government said yesterday. The consumer price index increased by 0.75 percent on year last month, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said. The index is a measurement of changes in the retail prices of a constant market basket of goods and services. The wholesale price index -- a gauge of production cost -- rose 4.27 percent on year in January, slightly lower than the 4.65 percent year-on-year increase a month earlier, said the agency, the government's chief statistician. The government cited higher prices for crude oil, petrochemicals and steel for the rise in the WPI.
Sunplus to buy Oak unit
Sunplus Technology Co (凌揚科技), Taiwan's fourth-largest chip designer, will buy a chipmaking unit of rival Oak Technology Inc for US$30 million, expanding its customer base to makers of DVD players and personal computers. Sunplus will pay US$16 million in cash and the equivalent of US$14 million in Sunplus stock, the companies said in a statement. Sunplus aims to supply makers of DVD players in China. Sichuan Changhong Electric Co and other Chinese makers of DVD players provided most of the world's output last year. They were able to combine cheap labor costs with chips from Taiwan suppliers that are cheaper and are more powerful than those from US suppliers such as ESS Technology and Oak. Sunplus will face competition from rivals such as MediaTek Inc (聯發科技), analysts said. Sunplus will combine the functions of an Oak DVD chip with one of its own to compete with Taiwan rival MediaTek, the world's largest designer of chips for DVD players. MediaTek was the first company to combine several DVD chips into one so-called single chip, helping cut manufacturing costs.
SIS enjoys rosy January sales
Silicon Integrated System Corp (矽統), the world's third-largest maker of computer chipsets, said January sales rose 49 percent from a year earlier. Sales rose to NT$1.8 billion (US$52 million) from a year ago. Sales increased 42 percent from NT$1.2 billion in the previous month, the company said in a statement.
Quanta posts profit decline
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), Taiwan's biggest notebook-computer maker, posted an unexpected profit decline in the fourth quarter. Net income fell to NT$2.76 billion (US$79 million) from NT$2.82 billion in the year-earlier quarter. The average forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of five analysts was profit of NT$3.2 billion. For 2002, the company posted net income of NT$10.8 billion.
NT dollar dips amid war fears
The new Taiwan dollar fell against its US counterpart on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, losing NT$0.031 to close at NT$34.734. A total of US$497 million changed hands. Taiwan's currency fell on speculation companies will be selling it for US dollars needed to buy oil, stocking up on crude after a one-week holiday. Demand for oil and the dollars needed to buy it may also rise amid concern a possible US attack against Iraq will disrupt supplies from the Middle East, traders said. Crude oil has risen 70 percent in the past year as the US said it is preparing to attack Iraq, fueling dollar demand from importers. Trading resumed today after the Lunar New Year holiday. "The Taiwan dollar will fall," said Chris Lin, a currency trader at Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行). "Under circumstances where oil prices will rise, demand for the US dollar will increase."
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to