The Consumers’ Foundation (消基會) yesterday urged the Fair Trade Commission (FTC ) to investigate whether Microsoft Corp’s decision to stop sales of Windows XP operating system violates the Fair Trade Law (公平交易法).
“Microsoft has a monopoly position in Taiwan with a nearly 98 percent market share. It is unfair for the company to use its monopoly power to force consumers to pay a higher price to use the Vista operating system,” foundation acting chairman Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁) said at a media briefing.
Windows Vista costs up to NT$2,000 more than Windows XP, which Hsieh said was an additional burden on the consumer.
The foundation conducted a survey last month which showed that 61 percent of Taiwanese consumers said they were bothered by the fact that they could not choose the operating system that they prefer when buying new computers.
Another 56 percent of respondents said they would like to reinstall Windows XP into their newly bought computers that come with Windows Vista, while 67 percent said they disagreed with the decision to stop selling Windows XP.
The foundation said the survey showed that consumers were not only unsatisfied with Windows Vista, but also unhappy with the way Microsoft conducts business.
It said Microsoft shouldn’t have stopped selling Windows XP until it had come up with a better operating system, and consumers should have the right to choose the operating system they prefer.
Among the four editions of Windows Vista currently available, only users of Business and Ultimate editions are allowed to legally downgrade the operating system of their computers to Windows XP. Users of Home Basic and Home Premium editions are not allowed to do so.
FTC Commissioner Chou Ya-shu (周雅淑) said yesterday that the commission had launched an investigation on Aug. 4 to determine whether Microsoft had abused its dominant market position in Taiwan, but that it would continue to respect the company’s management autonomy.
In response, Microsoft Taiwan Corp said by telephone yesterday that it would conduct a large-scale survey after three months to obtain consumer feedback and find out what support consumers need.
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