■ Energy
Local consumption up 3.2%
Taiwan's energy consumption amounted to 162.3 million kiloliters of crude oil equivalent (KLOE) last year, up 3.2 percent over the year-earlier level, according to a report released yesterday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. Energy supplies amounted to 135.5 million KLOE last year, up 1 percent from 2004, the report said. Ninety-eight percent of the energy supplies were imported, more than half of which was in the form of oil and related products. Of the energy consumed, 54.59 million KLOE were in the form of electricity, up 4.7 percent from the previous year, and 41.46 million KLOE were in the form of oil products, up 2.4 percent year-on-year. The two items together accounted for more than 90 percent of all energy consumed, it said. Energy consumption increased 1.7 percent from the previous year in the industrial sector, 7.6 percent in the household sector, and 7 percent in the commercial sector, according to the report.
■ Electronics
AUO to expand in Taichung
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) plans to invest an additional NT$254 billion (US$7.8 billion) for expansion, according to the committee of the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) in Taichung. AU Optronics aims to raise production capacity to meet rising demand for liquid-crystal displays, and construction of a so-called 7.5-generation factory will start in May.
■ Banking
Land Bank hires Goldman
Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行) hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc to study a plan to merge with rival Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行). The US investment bank will submit a report on the proposed merger between the two state-owned lenders to the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet in April. The proposed merger would help create a lender with combined assets of NT$4.78 trillion (US$147.3 billion), ranking among the world's top 80 banks. Both Bank of Taiwan and Land Bank are unlisted.
■ Airline Industry
Union ratifies pension plan
United Airlines' flight attendants have overwhelmingly ratified an agreement for a defined-contribution retirement plan, their union said on Friday in an announcement signaling the end of the union's rancorous battle against the company over pensions. The union said more than 79 percent of flight attendants who cast ballots voted to approve the new pension plan, which replaces defined-benefit pensions terminated by the airline as part of its three-year bankruptcy restructuring. The new plan, which is retroactive to Jan. 1, includes company direct and matching contributions beginning at 5 percent and escalating to 6 percent of a flight attendant's earnings within two years.
■ Advertising
Links to aid Microsoft sales
Microsoft Corp may as much as quadruple Internet advertising sales within three years using technology that links ad purchases among online products, including MSN search and Xbox games. Microsoft, which trails rivals Google Inc and Yahoo! Inc in Internet ad sales, is testing software called adCenter that will sell and display promotional links next to MSN search results. The software also will be used to sell ads in computer games and on the Microsoft home page, Joanne Bradford, a Microsoft corporate vice president, said yesterday in an interview.
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
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
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)