Amtran Technology Co Ltd (瑞軒科技), which makes flat-panel TVs for US top TV brand Vizio Inc, yesterday said it plans to begin shipping its smart TVs to Vizio in the second half of this year, beating local competitors to be the first Taiwanese firm to supply TVs integrated with Internet functionality.
The move would see Vizio join the world’s top TV makers, including Sony Corp, Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics, in the latest television niche at a time when most TV makers have delayed or shelved their products powered by Google Inc’s Android software.
Vizio recently showcased two Google TV models during the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Vizio will launch the new products in the second half of the year in response to Sony’s sales of smart TVs, and we will be the first OEM company to ship smart TVs,” Derek Yu (尤彥博), special assistant to Amtran’s chief executive Alpha Wu (吳春發), said on the sidelines of a forum arranged by local market research house Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所).
Vizio’s first smart televisions will be powered by Intel’s Atom processor, Yu added.
Amtran expects shipments of Internet TVs and smart TVs to double to more than 1.1 million units this year, compared with 600,000 units last year, spokesman Scottie Chiu (邱裕平) said by telephone.
Overall, shipments of flat-panel TVs are expected grow about 27 percent this year to 7 million units, up from 5.5 million units last year, helped by new orders from LG Electronics Inc and Chinese TV makers, Chiu said.
Based on Topology’s forecast, global shipments of smart TVs would more than double to 36 million units this year, compared with 15 million units last year. Overall, global shipments of LCD TVs would grow to 210 million units this year, from last year’s 184 million units.
“The uptake of smart TVs will largely depend on whether Google can come out with a new Android system specifically designed for TVs in September,” Topolgoy analyst Maxwell Chang (張乘維) told reporters.
Samsung would be the early beneficiary from a smart TV fever, Chang said.
However, Taiwanese companies such as Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) and Wistron Corp (緯創) would also see new orders to produce smart TVs, he said.
Separately, Amtran said it had inked a license-crossing agreement with LG, settling two-year-old patent infringement lawsuits related to LCD TVs with the South Korean company, according to an Amtran filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The companies would agree to drop cases pending before the US International Trade Commission and would dismiss all outstanding actions in the appropriate courts, the statement said.
“I think the settlement will help increase [TV] orders from LG Electronics,” Chiu said.
Shares of Amtran jumped 2.56 percent to NT$28, beating the benchmark TAIEX, which rose 1.09 percent yesterday.
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