TECHNOLOGY
Foxconn’s Brazil plan ‘intact’
A massive investment plan in Brazil initiated by Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) to produce gadgets for US consumer electronics giant Apple Inc remains intact, Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante said on Friday. Mercadante said Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, would start to produce iPads and iPhones at its new Brazilian plant by the end of this year as scheduled. The comments came after a Reuters report that last week said Foxconn’s planned US$12 billon (NT$366 billion) investment was “in doubt.” The report said Foxconn had faced problems, including a breakdown in negotiations with Brazilian authorities over tax breaks and a lack of skilled workers for the facility in Jundiai, Sao Paolo state. The ministry said Foxconn has started a training course for its 1,000 new Brazilian employees.
EUROZONE
Slovakia pledges support
Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radicova on Friday said her country’s parliament should approve new powers for the eurozone’s bailout fund by Oct. 14, which would clear a major obstacle to a key part of the bloc’s strategy for handling its debt crisis. Objections by a junior governing party in a country of only 5 million people have cast uncertainty over activating plans to strengthen the fund — showing once again the eurozone’s slow and unwieldy decisionmaking in times of crisis. The new powers for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) were agreed by eurozone leaders in July to forestall a messy Greek default and a wider meltdown in other debt-laden members, such as Italy and Spain. So far, 14 of the currency bloc’s 17 members have approved a wider mandate for the 440 billion euro (US$589 billion) EFSF so it can make emergency loans, rescue banks and help sovereigns under attack from markets. Following a one-on-one meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Radicova said the Slovak parliament would ratify the EFSF’s expansion before a summit of EU leaders scheduled for Oct. 17 and 18.
INTERNET
Microsoft fixes program
Microsoft raced on Friday to fix an anti-virus program that targeted Google’s Chrome browsing software as a malicious threat and kicked it off computers. Microsoft said the case of mistaken coding identity lasted about three hours and affected about 3,000 users. “An incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed from customers’ PCs” Microsoft said at a malware protection Facebook page. An update to free Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software had mistakenly targeted Chrome as a troublesome computer virus tailored to steal online banking information.
TECHNOLOGY
TPK plans to sell shares
TPK Holding Co (宸鴻) plans to sell between 16 million and 20 million new shares through global depositary receipts (GDRs) to fund its unit’s expansion and to buy equipment, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday. Its shareholder Balda Investments Singapore Pte plans to sell between 7.6 million and 9.5 million TPK common shares in the form of GDRs, the company said in a separate statement. Meanwhile, TPK Universal Solutions Ltd acquired 80 percent of CIM Corp for NT$14.3 million, parent TPK Holding said in a statement on Friday.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by