Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) is open to mergers and acquisitions as the flat panel industry has been battered by falling demand at home and abroad, founder Hsu Wen-long (許文龍) said in an interview with the Chinese-language Business Weekly (商業周刊) magazine to be released on Monday.
Hsu, 80, who established the nation’s second-largest flat-panel maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics in 1998, talked to Business Weekly about how Chi Mei plans to weather the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, after the company slashed more than 3,000 contract workers last week.
“There are many people who are richer and more capable than me, we [Chi Mei Optoelectronics] can ask others to run the company,” Hsu was quoted as saying about the troubles facing the Tainan-based company.
Hsu said in the interview that he expected that the company could lose around NT$60 billion (US$1.82 billion) next year given current economic conditions.
JOB CUTS
On the company’s recent large-scale job cuts, Hsu said he was not informed of the decision beforehand, but had asked the management team to demonstrate its sincerity in resolving the issue.
“What I mean by sincerity is that, you have to sacrifice yourself while others are being sacrificed,” Hsu said, without elaborating.
In regard to the future of Taiwan’s flat panel industry, Hsu admitted that even he had lost confidence, and did not think the government has the capability to help solve such a huge problem.
SHARED ASSET
Nonetheless, Hsu urged the government not to give up on the flat panel industry, as Taiwan, along with South Korea and Japan, are the only three countries in the world that have the capability to develop it.
“The flat panel industry is Taiwanese society’s shared asset … If Chi Mei lacks the capability to shore up the industry, the government could ask others to do this,” Hsu said in the interview.
In response to Business Weekly’s report, Chi Mei Optoelectronics issued a statement yesterday, saying that Hsu is willing to adopt an open-minded attitude towards the development of the industry, but the company does not have any specific merger plan at the moment.
The company’s statement also defended its layoff move last week, saying it was necessary amid the ongoing global slowdown.
“The company has to slim down and undertake the reorganization ... to ride out this industrial storm. It is a painful process and could cause a misunderstanding for outsiders, but the current workforce adjustment at Chi Mei Optoelectronics is no different from the situations that are facing other companies that must deal with international competitiveness,” the statement read.
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