The slow global economic recovery and sharp cuts to national defense budgets are expected to blow a chill wind through the Farnborough International Airshow next week.
Though there are some glimmers of light amid the austerity gloom as plane makers, government ministers and military top brass gather for one of the aviation and defense industry’s premier events.
There is buzz about the debut of two of the world’s most long-anticipated aircraft — the Boeing 787 and Airbus A400M — and likely commercial plane orders from buyers in the Middle East and Asia.
More than 1,000 exhibitors from 38 countries have signed up to take part in the weeklong event showcasing both commercial and defense aircraft. Delegations from Egypt, Taiwan and Morocco will be attending for the first time, while organizers also cited stronger interest from major players China and Russia.
Analysts expect the event to be more upbeat than last year’s sister show in Le Bourget outside Paris as the global economy staggers back to its feet, but they aren’t holding their breath for orders anywhere near the record-breaking US$88.7 billion worth announced in Farnborough in 2008.
“The show is a little too soon to see a huge rise of orders, but there’ll probably be more than Paris,” Forecast International analyst Raymond Jaworowski said. “We should start to see orders accelerate late this year.”
Boeing, which suffered a setback on the eve of the show by revealing that delivery of the already long-delayed 787 may be set back yet again, this week predicted that the global airline industry will need US$3.6 trillion in new aircraft over the next 20 years.
The Geneva-based International Air Transport Association has forecast that global industry profits will reach US$2.5 billion this year, an upturn from the huge US$9.4 billion loss last year.
Analysts expect Asia and North America to lead the recovery, with Europe lagging behind. Strikes at some airlines, the debt crisis and the volcanic ash cloud that caused major disruptions this spring are all hurting Europe’s recovery.
Analysts are instead expecting Middle Eastern and Asian buyers to put up some money. Emirates Airline, the largest in the Gulf states, has indicated it would announce new orders at Farnborough after surprising many with a repeat order last month for 32 Airbus A380 superjumbos.
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