TAIEX gains on US rally
The TAIEX yesterday closed above the 9,000-point mark for the first time since May 13 on follow-through buying in the electronics sector after Wall Street staged a rally overnight, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 73.51 points, or 0.82 percent, to end at 9,062.35 on turnover of NT$130.93 billion (US$4.57 billion). The market moved between 8,999.84 points and 9089.47 points before the close.
Charter space agreement
Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) and Pacific International Lines (PIL) have reached an agreement with COSCO Container Lines Co (COSCON, 中遠集裝箱運輸) that they will slot charter space on COSCON’s Europe Trade with effect from yesterday.
The two companies will slot charter space on COSCON’s Asia to North Europe Loop 1 (NE1) and Loop 3 (NE3) services, Wan Hai said.
“This arrangement would allow Wan Hai and PIL to widen their port coverage in China and improve on service quality with better frequency and transit time,” the company said in a statement.
The NE1 and NE3 connect China to North Europe.
MediaTek in Yahoo deal
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest mobile phone chip designer, said yesterday it had reached an agreement with Yahoo Inc that will embed the US Internet company’s services into -MediaTek’s mobile platform solutions, a company statement showed.
Under the partnership, Yahoo will deliver its mobile Internet services including Yahoo Messenger, News, Finance, Weather, Mail and Flickr on MediaTek’s MAUI Runtime Environment (MRE), the statement said.
MRE is MediaTek’s new middleware technology designed for mobile developers to deploy services and content for cellphones.
CHT to oversee Alcatel-Lucent
A legislative committee has asked Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), Taiwan’s largest telecom operator, to oversee the operations of the Taiwan subsidiary of telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent SA to prevent questionable business practices.
The Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee passed a non-binding resolution on Monday demanding that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications push CHT to better oversee the subsidiary’s operations and report its findings in one month. CHT has a 40 percent stake in Alcatel Lucent’s Taiwan subsidiary, Taiwan International Standard Electronics Ltd (台灣國際標準電子).
Lawmakers accused Alcatel--Lucent Taiwan of not acting professionally in carrying out contracts it won to supply the National Fire Administration with satellite telecommunication systems and vehicles for disaster prevention and rescue.
Big Sun to sell new shares
Big Sun Energy Technology Inc (太陽光電) agreed to sell 12 million new shares for a total of NT$228 million to an unidentified strategic investor yesterday, the Hsinchu-based company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Petrol prices unchanged: CPC
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) will keep domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas unchanged, and raise natural gas prices by NT$0.43 per cubic meter for this month, the company said in a statement yesterday.
NT hits three-week high
The New Taiwan dollar advanced to a three-week high after global investors pumped money into Taiwanese stocks in the last two days, closing 0.3 percent higher at NT$28.7 against its US counterpart.
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
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
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