■ Electronics
Flat-panel sector up 30.8%
The total production value of Taiwan's flat-panel display industry posted a 30.8 percent increase last year to reach NT$1.27 trillion (US$38.6 billion), thanks to rising demand, according to statistics released on Friday by the Industrial Technology Research Institute. The total production value this year is likely to reach NT$1.45 trillion, institute analysts said. As the price of liquid-crystal TVs is falling, the sales are expanding, the analysts said, adding that this would also help increase sales of large TFT-LCD panels. The analysts said that to cope with falling prices, manufacturers needed to have flexible production capabilities and improve their supply efficiency.
■ Stock options
HP faces US Senate probe
Hewlett-Packard Co said that it is facing a US Senate investigation into a stock option debacle that it inherited last year with its US$4.9 billion acquisition of software maker Mercury Interactive Corp. HP has been asked for more information about Mercury's alleged mishandling of stock options in a request received on Feb. 26 from an investigative arm of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. The Senate's interest in Mercury threatens to create more legal headaches for HP, which has spent much of the past six months trying to make amends for a company-approved investigation that obtained personal information under false pretenses about more than a dozen HP directors, journalists and their families.
■ Furniture
Vietnamese workers strike
Demanding higher pay, 3,000 Vietnamese workers unexpectedly walked off the job at a Taiwanese-owned furniture factory in southern Vietnam, state media and company officials reported yesterday. Staff at Vietnam Green River Wood and Lumber in Binh Duong Province complained that new employees were earning as much as workers with more seniority, the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported. Nguyen Thi Mai, a company human resources official, said the workers didn't inform the trade union or the company before starting their strike on Friday. In Vietnam, strikes that do not go through trade unions are illegal.
■ Automakers
GM expects quarterly profit
General Motors Corp says it will do something this week that's a rarity these days for US-based automakers: report a profit. Analysts don't expect the profit to be huge, but say it's a sign that GM's restructuring plan, or at least its massive cost cuts, is beginning to take hold. The world's largest automaker reported losing US$3 billion through the first nine months of last year and US$10.6 billion in 2005. If GM delivers on the quarterly net profit, it would be its first since the fourth quarter of 2004, when it made US$630 million.
■ Aviation
Malaysia Airlines to sell land
Malaysia Airlines plans to sell off property, including a piece of freehold land and a building which it currently operates from, to the government's pension fund. The sale, worth 145 million ringgit (US$41.4 million), to the Employees Provident Fund is part of the airline's restructuring plan, the carrier said late on Friday in a statement to Malaysia's bourse. Last year, the loss-making national carrier disposed of its headquarters and other buildings as part of the restructuring exercise, which has also seen it axing unprofitable air routes.
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