AUTOMOBILES
Toyota set to cut board size
Japan’s Toyota Motor is set to unveil a long-term strategic plan today that will sharply reduce the size of its board and focus on emerging market growth, a report said yesterday. The world’s largest automaker will aim to sharply cut the number of board members, a move that has stoked tensions within the Japanese firm’s management, the Wall Street Journal reported. The widely anticipated plan will provide Toyota with a blueprint for the decade and also give a glimpse of president Akio Toyoda’s management style and goals, the report said. While the automaker has declined to give details about the new strategy prior to its formal announcement, the WSJ cited sources as saying it plans to roughly halve the number of board members from the current 27.
JAPAN
Surplus shrinks 47.6 percent
Japan’s current account surplus shrank 47.6 percent from a year earlier in January as the trade balance fell into its first deficit in two years, the finance ministry said yesterday. The surplus in the current account — the broadest measure of trade with the rest of the world — stood at ¥461.9 billion (US$5.6 billion) in the month. Separate data released yesterday by the Bank of Japan showed bank lending continued to drop last month for the 15th straight month, a sign that many firms remain cautious about the economic outlook.
AVIATION
Air China signs Boeing deal
Boeing says it has signed a deal to sell five of its new 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jets to Air China. Boeing and Air China, the country’s flag carrier, didn’t say how much the deal was worth. At list prices it would be about US$1.6 billion but airlines typically get big discounts.Air China will use the planes to expand its international routes. The jets can carry 467 passengers and feature a new wing design and upgraded flight deck. The order was announced yesterday at the start of an air show in Hong Kong. It still needs Chinese government approval.
INTERNET
YouTube buys TV company
YouTube announced on Monday that it bought Internet television company Next New Networks to improve content for the Google-owned video-sharing Web site. The New York City-based startup was launched four years ago and is home to popular networks, such as “Barely Political” and “Indy Mogul,” which it billed as the “filmmaking network for the YouTube generation.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and YouTube stressed that it was not getting into the content creation business.
INTERNET
Skype to launch advertising
Internet phone company Skype says it is launching advertising on its service for the first time. The Luxembourg-based company, which is still 30 percent owned by online auction house eBay Inc, also on Monday announced its first advertisers: Groupon Inc, Nokia Corp, Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures and Visa Inc. Skype said its platform, with 145 million users a month and 29 million at peak times, is attractive for brands to market their products. The platform will support large-format, rich interactive ads.
INTERNET
Google purchases UK site
Google bought British price comparison site BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7 million (US$61 million) on Monday. BeatThatQuote offers price comparisons on a wide range of products, from insurance to legal services and from utilities to retail items.
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