■ Airlines buy up Xiamen cargo
The nation's two largest carriers, China Airlines (華航) and EVA Airways (長榮航空), have joined two local companies in taking a 49 percent stake in Xiamen International Airport Air Cargo Terminal Ltd (廈門國際航空港貨運站公司) in south-eastern China. This marks the second cross-strait venture in cargo operations despite a lack of direct air links between the two sides. CAL said in a statement it has invested NT$1.65 million for a 12 percent share in the new firm. EVA Airways and Far East Air Transport Corp (遠東航空) have each taken 12 percent of the company and Taiwan Airport Service Co (台勤公司) bought a 13 percent stake. The remaining 51 percent is owned by the Xiamen City Government.
■ Export growth slows
Export growth slowed to 19.2 percent last month, down from 20 percent in August, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Import growth last month also slowed to 29.4 percent to US$14.21 billion, compared with the 33.7 percent increase to US$13.9 billion in August. The September trade surplus fell 52.2 percent year-on-year to US$750 million, while for the nine months period, it stood at US$6.37 billion, down 49 percent. Exports during the nine months to September rose 24.2 percent year-on-year to US$128.29 billion, with imports up 34.3 percent to US$121.92 billion. Last month, exports to Hong Kong and China totalled US$5.45 billion, or 36.4 percent of the nation's total shipments, with those to the US worth US$2.45 billion or 16.4 percent of the total. Exports to Europe stood at US$1.89 billion, or 12.6 percent, with Southeast Asian nations taking US$1.77 billion or 11.8 percent.
■ Corning expands LCD plant
Corning Inc, the world's largest maker of glass used in flat-panel televisions and computer dis-plays, said it will spend US$326 million to expand a liquid-crystal-display (LCD) factory under construction in Taichung. The funds will be used for the second phase of the LCD glass substrate plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park, the Corning, New York-based company said in a statement. The first phase was approved in July. Global LCD sales will increase 50 percent this year to US$36 billion for panels measuring 10 inches diagonally and larger, researcher DisplaySearch has said.
■ Taiwan market betters S Korea
Taiwan's stock market will outperform South Korea's in the next 12 months because of stronger economic growth and a possible increase in fund flows, J.P. Morgan Securities Inc's (MSCI) regional equity strategist Adrian Mowat said at a conference in New York. Rising employment is fueling consumer demand in Taiwan. The nation's jobless rate fell to a three-year low of 4.4 percent in August. In contrast, Koreans are spending less after a credit binge left many unable to meet interest payments. A scheduled increase of Tai-wan's weighting in MSCI's global indexes also helped to bolster the outlook for the island's stocks, Mowat said. MSCI said Taiwan would account for 20 percent, the largest market represented in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index next year, based on market value on June 2. Local companies have 55 percent of their market value rep-resented in the indexes. MSCI said it will increase that to 75 percent at the close of trading on Nov. 30, and to 100 percent next May 31.
■ NT dollar slightly up
The New Taiwan dollar gained NT$0.012 against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday on a turnover of US$580 million.
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