■ Tax revenues up 50%
Taxes funnelled into the national coffers last month totaled NT$71.1 billion (US$2.14 billion), up by 50.4 percent over the year-earlier level, the Ministry of Finance reported on Tuesday. Tax revenues generated by stock transaction deals reached NT$10.7 billion last month, a monthly high since February 2002 and representing a 2.7-fold rise compared to the previous year's record, which is also a new single-month high since March 2000, ministry officials said. They attributed the big jump in last month's stock transaction taxes to a bullish stock market as a result of recovering business conditions. In addition, land-value increment tax revenue also grew by NT$4.2 billion year-on-year to NT$7.5 billion last month thanks to a government policy that provides a 50 percent cutback in such taxes, income from which hit a record high of NT$10.05 billion last December. The policy of halving the land-value increment tax was originally to have expired in January, but the Legislative Yuan recently decided to extend it for another one year.
■ Cycle show opens in Taipei
The Taipei International Cycle Show opened yesterday at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibi-tion Hall, with a theme of "Think Bicycle, Think Taiwan." The four-day show is the largest of its kind in Asia, with as many as 1,828 booths. It is sponsored by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (外貿協會) and Taiwan Bicycle Exporters Association (台灣區自行車輸出業公會). The sponsors said that the show is the largest ever, with the largest-ever number of foreign exhibitors, including Shimano, Cat Eye, Accell, and Michelin. Local manufacturers such as Giant (捷安特) and Merida (美利達) are also displaying their wares, including tandem, folding, mountain and electric bicycles.
■ TSMC, Qualcomm to collaborate
Qualcomm Inc, the developer of code-division-multiple-access (CDMA) technology, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) announced yesterday they will collaborate on 90 nanometer low-power process for wireless applications has borne fruit. In a statement issued by the California-based Qualcomm, the ompanies said the planned delivery of Qualcomm's new wireless chipsets this year will use TSMC's 90nm low-power process technology. The new technology will greatly reduce mobile application power consumption, improve processor performance and enable the integration of more features onto a single chip, the statement said. TSMC's 90nm technology is deployed in its Fab 12 in Hsinchu, the industry's largest 300mm production facility. The new technology is also expected to be deployed in TSMC's Fab 14 in Tainan when the facility is ramped for production.
■ Hon Hai may sell HK phone unit
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to sell shares in its Hong Kong mobile-phone manufacturing unit to city investors, probably in October, a Chinese-language newspaper said, citing chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘). No details of the issue or the amount the company hopes to raise were disclosed. Separately, Hon Hai Precision's unit InnoLux Display Corp (群創光電) yesterday signed a NT$20 billion syndicated loan with Chiao Tung Bank (交通銀行) and seven other lenders to invest in liquid-crystal-display production plants, the report said.
■ NT weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.057 to close at NT$33.384 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$844 million.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is