■ FOOD
Units buy Want Want shares
Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), Taiwan’s biggest food company, said two units bought a combined 0.98 percent stake in Want Want China Holdings Ltd (旺旺中國控股) for HK$401 million (US$51 million). The units bought about 132 million Want Want China shares at a price range of between HK$3.03 and HK$3.05 apiece from April 1 until Friday, the Taipei-based food company said in two separate filings on the TAIEX. The two units are President (BVI) International Investment Holdings Ltd and Uni-President China Holdings Ltd. Shanghai-based Want Want China is the country’s largest maker of rice cakes and flavored milk.
■ REAL ESTATE
Transactions up 11 percent
Real estate transactions in Taipei City were up by 11 percent in the first quarter compared with the last three months of last year, a sign of rebounding confidence in the local housing market. The figures released by the city government showed that the number of properties bought and sold in January had reached its highest level since the second month of last year. Real estate brokers said the figures showed that the confidence of residents of Taipei in the local housing market had recovered and that this trend should continue. Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) president Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said that online surveys conducted by his company after the January legislative elections and the presidential election last month showed that a growing number of residents were optimistic about the housing market.
■ TELECOMS
eBay may sell Skype
EBay Inc is considering selling its Skype Internet telephone division unless it can be combined with other units, the company said. EBay will review Skype this year to see if it is helping its online auction and PayPal systems, eBay chief executive John Donahoe told the Financial Times on Friday. If the results don’t pan out, the company would take a new look at the situation. This could lead to selling Skype, the report said. But Donahoe dismissed reports that eBay wanted to sell the internet payment system PayPal, which Donahoe said brings huge advantages to eBay and which the company wants to hold on to “for many years,” Donahoe said.
■ TELECOMS
AT&T announces cuts
US telecommunications giant AT&T Inc said on Friday it will reduce its workforce by 1.5 percent, primarily among management employees, as part of a plan to streamline operations. The company said it expects to take a pre-tax charge of US$374 million during the first quarter related to the job cuts. AT&T said that despite the layoffs, which represent about 4,500 employees, the overall headcount was expected to remain stable this year, as it plans to hire additional employees to support growth areas.
■ INTERNET
Europeans not all Web savvy
Europe is home to some of the most Internet-savvy countries in the world: the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. But 40 percent of EU citizens never use the Internet at all, the European Commission said on Friday, meaning many people risk being left behind as more public and commercial services go online. About two-thirds of Romanians, Bulgarians and Greeks are strangers to the online world. Elderly people, those out of work and those with less education are more likely to be offline, an EU report said, telling European governments to work harder to close the gaps.
ASML Holding NV’s new advanced chip machines have a daunting price tag, said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), one of the Dutch company’s biggest clients. “The cost is very high,” TSMC senior vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, referring to ASML’s latest system known as high-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV). “I like the high-NA EUV’s capability, but I don’t like the sticker price,” Zhang said. ASML’s new chip machine can imprint semiconductors with lines that are just 8 nanometers thick — 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation. The machines cost 350 million euros (US$378 million)
Apple Inc has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the start-up’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence (AI) features to its devices, people familiar with the matter said. The two sides have been finalizing terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple also has held talks with Alphabet Inc’s Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot. Those discussions have not led to an agreement, but are ongoing. An OpenAI
INSATIABLE: Almost all AI innovators are working with the chipmaker to address the rapidly growing AI-related demand for energy-efficient computing power, the CEO said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported about 60 percent annual growth in revenue for last month, benefiting from rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing applications. Revenue last month expanded to NT$236.02 billion (US$7.28 billion), compared with NT$147.9 billion in April last year, the second-highest level in company history, TSMC said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue surged 20.9 percent, from NT$195.21 billion in March. As AI-related applications continue to show strong growth, TSMC expects revenue to expand about 27.6 percent year-on-year during the current quarter to between US$19.6 billion and US$20.4 billion. That would
‘FULL SUPPORT’: Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said he hopes more companies would settle in the prefecture to create an area similar to Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park The newly elected governor of Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture said he is ready to ensure wide-ranging support to woo Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to build its third Japanese chip factory there. Concerns of groundwater shortages when TSMC’s two plants begin operations in the prefecture’s Kikuyo have spurred discussions about the possibility of tapping unused dam water, Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said in an interview on Saturday. While Kimura said talks about a third plant have yet to occur, Bloomberg had reported TSMC is already considering its third Japanese fab — also in Kumamoto — which would make more advanced chips. “We are