■SOLAR ENERGY
E-ton president to resign
E-ton Solar Tech Co (益通光能), one of the nation’s leading solar cell makers, said on Friday its president and chief technology officer Allen Guo (郭俊華) offered to resign for health and family reasons. In a stock exchange filing on Friday night, E-ton said chairman Stephen Wu (吳世章) would act as president during the transition period, while Guo would serve as an unpaid technology consultant. Guo replaced Tsai Chin-yao (蔡進耀) to serve as the company’s president in September last year. Earlier this month, Guo said the company planned to boost annual capacity next year to 500 megawatts from 320MW now.
■REAL ESTATE
HK sales near 2007 level
Hong Kong property sales may total HK$518 billion (US$67 billion) this year, approaching the level of 2007, thanks to a weaker US dollar, a massive inflow of money from China and low interest rates, the Ming Pao Daily News reported yesterday. Registered secondary residential property sales may reach HK$286 billion, the Hong Kong-based Chinese-language paper said, citing data from Centaline Property Agency Ltd and the city’s Land Registry. Sales in 2007 totaled HK$525.6 billion, with secondary residential transactions of HK$296 billion, it said.
■ECONOMY
China policy shift expected
People should be prepared for change in China’s macroeconomic policies as the nation’s economic situation shifts, Dow Jones reported, citing Fan Gang (樊綱), an adviser to the country’s central bank. “Policy adopted amid the crisis can’t last forever,” Fan was quoted as saying in the report, which was published on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site. Certain flexibility of macroeconomic policy is an important factor in maintaining economic stability, he was cited as saying. Fan, who advisers the People’s Bank of China, said on Nov. 18 that “double-digit” growth would not be good next year amid the rising risk of bubbles in stock, real estate and commodity prices.
■INTERNET
China monitors gamers
China has placed more than 4.65 million computers at 80,000 Internet cafes under watch in a bid to crack down on violent or pornographic online games, state media reported yesterday. Xinhua quoted Chinese Culture Minister Cai Wu (蔡武) as saying in an interview that his ministry had banned 219 Internet games for carrying “lewd, pornographic and violent” content and had blocked access to games 87 million times this year. Cai’s ministry plans to step up regulation of the fast-expanding online game sector and “would improve censorship of the games in the future,” Xinhua reported.
■ECONOMY
UK parents raid kids’ funds
One-fifth of parents in recession-hit Britain admit they have dipped into their children’s savings accounts to make ends meet, a survey for a financial services company said on Friday. About 22 percent of parents said they had been forced to raid their children’s savings, with many needing extra cash to pay bills and unexpected car repairs, the survey for Engage Mutual Assurance said. Just under half of parents said they borrowed between £200 and £500 (US$319 and US$798), according to the survey by OnePoll. Most parents in Britain, which is still in recession after being hit hard by the global economic crisis, took the money only when there was no alternative. Eight out of 10 said they saw it as a loan, to be repaid when possible.
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