SMARTPHONES
Some Blackberry blocked
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will stop individuals and small businesses accessing the most private data services offered by BlackBerry, a UAE newspaper said, but the government said no services would be disrupted to any subscribers. Only businesses with 20 or more subscriptions will be allowed to use high security accounts on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which allows for services such as highly secure corporate e-mail, The National newspaper reported on Saturday. The move comes months after the UAE dropped a threat to suspend BlackBerry services after resolving a dispute over access with Canada’s Research In Motion (RIM). It also coincides with efforts by Arab states to stem rolling pro-democracy revolts, largely organized on social media, that have hit all but two Gulf states, the UAE and Qatar. RIM said it had been in contact with the regulator, which told it the rules were not specific to BlackBerry.
EMPLOYMENT
Lower corporate taxes: Pepsi
US companies might hire more workers if the US were to cut the tax rate on cash that companies bring home from foreign subsidiaries, PepsiCo Inc chief executive officer Indra Nooyi said. Some company profits are “trapped in overseas countries because the tax rate to bring them back is extremely high,” Nooyi said in an interview on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS program, scheduled for broadcast yesterday. Taxing repatriated cash at 15 percent, compared with the top corporate rate of 35 percent, is “a creative way to address unemployment, without adding to the deficit,” Nooyi said. US President Barack Obama and some US lawmakers have mentioned lower corporate tax rates as they debate how to reduce the nation’s 8.8 percent unemployment rate while also bringing down the federal government’s more than US$14 trillion debt.
TOURISM
Japan warning lowered
Australia has eased its travel warning for Tokyo, more than a month after a magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami hit Japan’s north, damaging nuclear power facilities and triggering fears of a meltdown. Australia lowered the warning for Tokyo after the UN World Tourism Organization on Friday said there was no reason to avoid Japan as radiation levels at the nation’s airports and ports were well within safe limits. Australia’s overall advice for Japan urges travelers to exercise a “high degree of caution” — the third of five levels of warning, which range from the lowest of “be alert to your own security” to the highest of “do not travel.” Citizens are still advised to avoid Ibaraki, Tochigi, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, including an exclusion zone around the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
TELECOMS
Telcel hit with huge fine
Mexico’s anti-trust commission has hit billionaire Carlos Slim’s cellphone subsidiary with a 12 billion peso (US$1 billion) fine, parent company America Movil announced. The Federal Competition Commission said the cellphone subsidiary, Telcel, engaged in monopolistic practices associated with call terminations, America Movil said in a filing with the Mexican stock exchange late on Friday. The company said it was studying the fine and all options for appeal. America Movil is the largest provider of wireless service in Latin America, with 225 million subscribers. Its 2009 revenue totaled US$30 billion.
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