The nine-day Taipei International Autoshow (TIA, 台北國際車展) came to an end yesterday, having attracted about 230,000 visitors -- an 8 percent drop from two years ago.
It was a satisfactory year for the biannual show, organizer Taipei Automobile Distributors Association (TADA, 台北市汽車公會) said.
Despite worries over the economy, car distributors had similar budgets as those from previous shows and did not skimp out on the floor, a TADA public relations official said.
She said expectations of attendance were low prior to the show, because of low consumer confidence, high oil prices and concerns about the economy.
Attendance still exceeded initial expectations, mostly as the result of the release of new models and concept cars, as well as consumers looking for discounts and better deals, the official said.
Consumers may have been holding off buying decisions due to the sluggish economy. However, environmentally friendly cars, luxury models and show floor discounts gave some of them enough incentive to put down an order, she said.
Nissan (
Nissan sees the Livina model as a new market niche, combining the fuel economy of small cars, the space of multi-purpose vehicles and the utility of sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Sales of this model line should remain strong this year, Hsieh said.
Honda Taiwan (
However, not all companies were as satisfied.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) spokesman Steven Yang (楊湘泉) said that as the show was closing, most of its gifts had not been handed out.
The auto show is not a dealership showroom, Yang said. Rather, people come to the show to see high-end models, rare vehicles and concerts.
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