More than 24 million messages were sent through Chunghwa Telecom Co's (中華電信) mobile phone network during the first two days of the Lunar New Year holiday, according to Taiwan's largest telecom operator.
Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大哥大) said close to 23 million messages were sent through its network during the first two days of the traditional Chinese holiday that was just completed.
It is estimated that a total of 60 million short messages were sent through the nation's telecom operators during this period.
People in China sent 9.8 billion greetings through their mobile phones on Lunar New Year's eve and the week-long New Year's holiday, which was 3 billion messages more than last year, state media reported yesterday.
The staggering figures mark a continuing trend to send holiday good wishes by short messages instead of the traditional way -- paying visits bearing gifts.
From Lunar New Year's eve on Jan. 21 to the last day of the holiday on Jan. 28, mobile subscribers with China Mobile sent 7.8 billion short messages.
China Unicom clients sent 2 billion, the Xinhua news agency said.
With 269 million mobile phone subscribers nationwide by the end of last year, that averaged 36 messages per subscriber.
Paying 0.1 yuan (US$0.01) for each message on average, subscribers spent around 1 billion yuan over the holiday on mobile phone messages, according to Xinhua.
China's mobile phone subscribers soared by 30 percent last year to 269 million, exceeding the number of fixed-line users for the first time, according to official data.
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