Corning sees tight glass supply
Corning Inc, the world’s biggest maker of glass for flat-panel televisions, said glass supply will be “very tight” until the end of the third quarter on rising demand.
The company expects liquid-crystal-display (LCD) TV shipments this year to rise to 121 million from 102 million last year, the Corning, New York-based manufacturer said in a statement released in Taipei yesterday.
Corning expects China’s LCD-TV penetration rate to rise to 44 percent this year from 30 percent last year, Alan Eusden, head of Taiwan business, told reporters in Taipei.
Demand for TVs and home appliances increased after China earmarked 20 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) of subsidies for residents in rural areas to buy electronic products as part of efforts to stimulate consumption.
UMC set to acquire He Jian
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s second-largest custom-chip maker, received shareholders’ approval to buy the remaining 85 percent stake in He Jian Technology (Suzhou) Co (和艦) that it doesn’t already own, chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said in a telephone interview yesterday.
A motion for UMC to buy the stake for up to US$285 million in cash, stock or a combination of both was passed at the company’s annual shareholders meeting yesterday, Liu said.
The deal requires regulatory approval and the company hopes to finalize the acquisition by March, he said.
Bank to write off losses
Far Eastern International Bank’s (遠東商銀) annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday approved a proposal to write off losses by reducing its capital by 17.4 percent, or NT$4 billion (US$122.3 million), to NT$19.3 billion by the year’s end, its exchange filing said yesterday.
After the capital reduction, the bank plans to raise another NT$10 billion via private placements in preparation for a possible swap of stakes with Chinese banking partners once Taiwan inks a memorandum of understanding with China on market access, bank vice chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) told the shareholders’ meeting yesterday.
Hsu’s Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) formed a strategic alliance with the Bank of Chongqing (重慶銀行) in late May to initiate a 4 billion yuan, five-year loan from the Chinese bank to the Taiwanese business group’s subsidiary in Chongqing.
The Bank of Chongqing may further sell a stake to Far Eastern International Bank, which may also release a stake in itself to the Chinese bank, according to local media reports.
Worst may be over: TSMC boss
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest custom-chip maker, said the worst may be over for the global chip industry, company chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) said at TSMC’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday in Hsinchu, where the company is based.
It will take until 2012 for industry revenue to recover to last year’s levels, Chang said.
A company spokesman also said about one-third of the “several hundred” laid-off workers who were invited back have accepted the offer.
Tourism boosts TAIEX
Share prices closed up 0.75 percent yesterday on a technical rebound led by tourism after recent heavy losses, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 47.88 points to 6,462.27 on turnover of NT$114.30 billion (US$4.48 billion). Losers led gainers by 1,217 to 923 with 165 stocks unchanged.
Tourism soared 6.41 percent, financials rose 1.01 percent and electronics added 0.91 percent.
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