TSMC sets up joint venture
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with the US-based OmniVision Technologies Inc to establish a US$50 million joint venture, VisEra Technology Co (采鈺科技), which will offer back-end services for image capturing integrated circuit and module. "We hope to provide more competitive and quality service to all image sensor customers by integrating back-end manufacturing services for image sensors, including color filters," TSMC spokeswoman Lora Ho (何麗梅) said in a statement. The new company will be chaired by Michael Tsai (蔡國智), vice president of Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the statement added.
Yang Ming orders eight ships
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), a carrier that forecast profit this year to surge more than fivefold, said it plans to order another eight container ships to meet demand on Asian routes. Yang Ming, the nation's second-biggest shipper by market value, said in a statement the ships will each have the capacity to carry the equivalent of 1,730 20-foot containers. Global container shipping volume is estimated to reach 66 million 20-foot equivalent units this year, of which the amount carried within Asia accounts for 18 percent, Yang Ming said. The cargo volume on Asian routes may rise at an annual 6.5 percent, the carrier said.
Philips predicts IC card growth
Philips Semiconductors expects to see a wider usage of IC smart cards next year due to rising security concerns amid mounting credit card forgery, urge for transportation convenience and terrorist attacks, a company official said yesterday. "It will be a brisk year in 2004 for the use of smart cards. The use of such cards will double that of this year in financial sector," said Risto Peng (彭昌豪), a business development manager at Philips Taiwan. On the sidelines of a press conference to announce the company's new office in the Nankang Software Park (南港軟體園區), Peng said the potential demand for smart cards is expected to be as high as 92 million cards.
Cosmos Bank to market bonds
Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行) will start marketing US$300 million worth of bonds backed by cash-card loans to overseas and domestic investors today. The bank will meet investors in Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Switzerland, as well as local investors. The debt represents about 14.5 percent of its NT$69 billion (US$2.03 billion) total outstanding balance on its cash-card accounts, executive vice president Shih Kung-liang (施坤良) said.
CAL reopens India cargo route
China Airlines Co (華航) will resume cargo service to Delhi, India, next week amid growing demand and the airlines' expansion of its cargo capacity, a spokesman said yesterday. "Beginning next Wednesday, we will resume regular cargo service to Delhi after its suspension in 2001 due to the war in Afghanistan," said company spokesman Roger Han (韓梁中). The Delhi service will have three weekly flights -- Wednesday, Friday and Sunday -- using Boeing 747-400 freighters, Han said. China Airlines first operated cargo service to Delhi in 1999 and had to suspend it in 2001 because of war.
NT dollar strengthens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded higher against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.020 to close at NT$34.004 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$487 million.
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
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by