The Singapore Airshow saw more than US$13.4 billion in sales of aircraft and related equipment this week, thanks to a booming aviation market, organizers have said.
Another US$2.6 billion was generated from contracts for facilities and other services, they said in a statement issued late on Friday, at the inaugural event.
The small but wealthy city-state decided to host its own airshow after organizers of the Asian Aerospace fair moved the event to Hong Kong.
PHOTO: AFP
The biggest deal that was announced at the airshow was an order for 56 Boeing 737-900ER aircraft worth more than US$4.4 billion by Indonesian low-cost carrier Lion Air.
Indonesian flag-carrier Garuda ordered four Boeing 777-300ERs worth US$1 billion and business jet operator BJets signed a US$600 million contract for 40 Cessna and Hawker jets.
US-based Boeing's European rival said it had secured orders for five A330-200F cargo planes from BOC Aviation, an aircraft leasing firm fully owned by Bank of China (
The deal is worth a total of US$877 million at catalog prices.
"The new deals announced at the airshow demonstrate once again that Asia is the world's fastest-growing aerospace market," said Jimmy Lau, managing director of the event's organizers.
He said 70 percent of the exhibitors have already confirmed bookings for the biennial event in 2010 being held at a new seaside location near Changi Airport.
Lau promised "an even bigger and better" show in 2010, saying this year's event already had 40 percent more exhibition area than Asian Aerospace which was last held in Singapore in 2006 and saw US$15.2 billion in deals.
More than 30,000 accredited industry professionals visited the airshow and numbers were expected to grow as opened to the public at the weekend.
Organizers have dubbed the Singapore Airshow as Asia's biggest aerospace event because it has civilian and defense components, while Asian Aerospace has focused on commercial aviation after its shift to Hong Kong.
More than 800 exhibitors from 42 countries, including US defense firms Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, took part in the airshow that featured the latest warplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles and executive business jets.
"Asia is a vital market for us and it has been our constant endeavor to establish and strengthen our ties with this dynamic region," said Bernard Buisson, Singapore managing director for EADS, which owns Airbus.
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