AVIATION
Airline alliance approved
New Zealand’s government approved an alliance between Australian budget airline Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand yesterday, clearing the way for the airlines to expand operations between the two countries. New Zealand Transport Minister Steven Joyce gave the deal a green light, a week after Australia’s competition regulator approved the alliance. “More sustainable competition, cost savings and the commitment both airlines have made to maintain trans-Tasman passenger numbers will be major benefits of the alliance,” Joyce said in a statement. The approval applies for three years, the same time period agreed to by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
INTERNET
No IPO for Hulu for now
US online video entertainment site Hulu has decided not to go public for now and could examine other financing options, the The Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday. The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said Hulu, whose investors include News Corp, Disney and NBC Universal, is considering new subscription plans beyond Hulu Plus, its recently introduced premium service. The Journal said Hulu’s management had been looking at an initial public offering but decided not to proceed with an IPO right now and could pursue other options, including having Hulu’s current owners put in more money.
CHEMICALS
Royal DSM to buy Martek
The Dutch chemicals company Royal DSM NV says it plans to buy US biotech firm Martek Biosciences Corp for US$1.09 billion in cash, in a management supported deal. The company said its US$31.50 per share offer for Martek represents a 35 percent premium to Martek’s closing price on Dec. 20. DSM, the largest maker of nutritional supplements, said yesterday that Martek will boost its presence in the US and improve its infant formula products. The company also said the deal, which must be approved by shareholders and regulators, is expected to close in the second quarter of next year and will add to earnings in the first year.
SOFTWARE
Adobe beats forecasts
Adobe Systems Inc, the world’s biggest maker of design software, forecast on Monday that it will post a current-quarter profit, excluding items, of US$0.54 to US$0.59 a share, beating the average analyst forecast of US$0.51, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company also projected revenue of US$1 billion to US$1.05 billion, ahead of the average forecast of US$992 million. The firm posted a profit, excluding items, of US$0.56 per share for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 3. That beat the average forecast of US$0.52. Quarterly revenue of US$1.0 billion also beat the average forecast of US$$988 million.
TELECOMS
KDDI electronic book out
Japan’s No. 2 telecom operator, KDDI Corp, said yesterday that it would start electronic book distribution this week, offering an initial 20,000 titles for its e-reader. The LISMO Book Store service will start on Saturday for the “biblio Leaf SP02” e-reader, focusing on novels, how-to guides and business books, the company said. The initial line-up of 20,000 books will be expanded to 100,000 by the end of March 2012. The tablet-size reader has a two gigabyte memory which can store roughly 3,000 books, KDDI said.
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