ELECTRONICS
Samsung, Sumitomo partner
South Korea’s Samsung LED and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Co said yesterday they would form a joint venture to produce sapphire wafers, a key material in the manufacture of flat-screen electronic displays. The 50-50 joint venture will be capitalized at 80 billion won (US$72 million) and start production of sapphire ingots and wafers from early next year, Samsung LED said in a statement. The company, an affiliate of Samsung Electronics Co, said the deal is expected to help it secure supplies and meet the rising demand for LEDs. The deal comes amid market concern about a global shortage of wafers after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Research firm IHS iSuppli said the disaster led to the suspension of a quarter of the global production of silicon wafers, which are used to make semiconductors.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Japan stops loan for bridge
Japan has put on hold a promised US$400 million loan for a river bridge in Bangladesh, as it focuses instead on reconstruction at home following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, a senior Bangladeshi official said yesterday. The loan agreement with Japan was scheduled to be signed this month, Musharraf said, but it was not now clear when this might be possible. The Japanese government was part of an international consortium, led by the World Bank, that agreed last year to lend Bangladesh up to US$2.9 billion for the 6km multipurpose bridge over the Padma River. Musharraf said the project would go ahead as planned despite the delay over the Japanese loan.
BANKING
Bank shuts off Tokyo ATMs
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd will shorten cash machine hours and suspend service at some ATMs in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures due to ongoing power shortages. The bank will operate cash machines from 8am to 7pm, and suspend some machines outside of its branches. Convenience store cash machines will operate as normal. The changes will start on April 4, the company said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
FINANCE
Citi posts loss in Japan
Citigroup Inc’s Japanese investment banking and consumer finance business posted a loss for a third straight year last year, led by a decline in underwriting fees and brokerage commissions. Citigroup Japan Holdings Corp’s loss narrowed to ¥71.8 billion (US$878 million) for the year ended on Dec. 31 from ¥391.6 billion in 2009, it said in a statement filed yesterday to the Ministry of Finance in Tokyo. Total revenue fell 61 percent to ¥135.4 billion after the bank sold its Nikko Cordial Securities Inc brokerage unit and part of its investment banking business to Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc in 2009.
ELECTRONICS
Philips foresees major loss
Royal Philips Electronics NV predicted a first-quarter deficit from its television division close to the loss the unit had in all of last year, raising pressure on the incoming chief executive officer to fix the business. The loss will be 100 million euros (US$155 million) to 120 million euros, Philips said in a statement yesterday. Last year, Philips lost 130 million euros from televisions. Philips attributed the loss to pricing pressure. Philips will likely fail to break even with the business for a second straight year, it said. The television subsidiary has suffered as Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp cut prices to combat local Chinese suppliers, and Philips has sought to limit losses by farming out some production.
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