Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信), the nation’s No. 3 telecoms operator, expects its value-added service revenue to expand to NT$10 billion (US$341 million) this year, aided by a new online music service from its subsidiary Omusic Co Ltd (全音樂), a company executive said yesterday.
Omusic, an online music service provider established by Far EasTone and seven Taiwan-based record companies, launched a platform for users to purchase and download songs to their mobile phone, laptop computer or any electronic device from its collection of more than 200,000 titles, it said.
That will put Omusic, in which Far EasTone owns a 50 percent stake, in direct competition with existing online music service providers — KKBOX, developed by Skysoft Co (願境網訊) and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), and ezPeer, in which the nation’s No. 2 telecoms company Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) owns a 55 percent stake.
Photo: Wang Wen-lin, Taipei Times
As music downloading has been a popular service among Far EasTone subscribers, making such a service one of its major value-added service revenue sources made sense, Far EasTone president Yvonne Li (李彬) told a media briefing yesterday.
“With the launch of the Omusic online music platform, Far -EasTone’s value-added service revenues will grow 20 percent to greatly exceed NT$10 billion,” Li said.
Last year, value-added service revenues amounted to NT$9 billion.
Omusic will create a new business model for Taiwan’s digital music industry, Omusic chairman Sunny Chang (張松輝) said.
Subscribers will only have to pay NT$19 per song to download from the Web site and they can listen to the music on any electronic device they want when they go offline.
KKBOX and ezPeer subscribers are offered services at flat rates and they can only listen to the music online and on the device to which the music is downloaded.
Omusic also offers an “online-listening mode,” whereby consumers spend NT$3 per title to listen on the Internet. The company also plans to offer a flat rate next quarter, by setting up an “all-you-can-eat” mode, Omusic president Chang Pi-lan (張碧蘭) said.
This year, revenues from Omusic’s online music service are expected to reach up to NT$100 million — a 15 percent share of Taiwan’s online music market — Chang 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