AEROSPACE
Boeing bullish on Mideast
Boeing Co’s top Middle East executives said on Saturday their latest 787 Dreamliner and increased demand for defense capabilities would help the aerospace company’s increase its market share in the region. “From a global perspective our products and services are performing very well,” Boeing’s Middle East president Jeffrey Johnson told reporters ahead of the 12th Dubai Airshow, which was to open yesterday. “On the commercial airplane side of business, we recently saw two of our new products come to the market ... On defense ... unmanned systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and also cybersecurity have become very important today.” The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which began service last month and is the Boeing star display at this year’s airshow, landed on Saturday morning at Dubai International Airport.
UNITED KINGDOM
Infrastructure plan in works
Ministers are drawing up plans for a £50 billion (US$80 billion) housing and road-building program harnessing private-sector money, a newspaper reported yesterday. With the eurozone debt crisis further clouding prospects for the economy, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is under intense political pressure to find ways of spurring growth when he presents his financial statement to Parliament on Nov. 29. However, he insists he will not deviate from his plans to cut the swollen budget deficit, saying to do so would be to risk the country’s hard-won credibility with the markets. The Sunday Times said Osborne wants private-sector money held by pension fund managers and insurance companies to fund the infrastructure program to boost the recovery. His plan is designed to prompt a surge of housebuilding and public-sector construction projects.
COMMUNICATIONS
RCOM’s net profits plummet
India’s second-largest cellular firm, Reliance Communications Ltd, reported on Saturday quarterly net profits plunged 43.5 percent from a year ago, but was bullish about revenues from mobile Internet. Reliance Communications, or RCOM, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, said in a statement that net profit in the fiscal second quarter fell to 2.52 billion rupees (US$50 million) from 4.5 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier. It was the debt-laden company’s ninth straight drop in quarterly profit, but the results were far better than projected by analysts. “Data and non-voice revenue contribute around 20 percent to the overall revenue. We see data and non-voice revenue firming to 35 to 40 percent in the next two years,” RCOM’s head for wireless business Syed Safawi said.
INDIA
Minister issues warning
A minister warned yesterday against protectionism as the world grapples with the sovereign-debt crisis, portraying the country as a relative haven of stability in troubled economic times. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said the country was an influential emerging economy and that the country “will be part of the stabilization process when it comes to what’s happening in Europe.” However, he said: “In difficult times, the tendency to look inwards, to have protective measures ... is something the G20 must reassure the world that we will not allow that to happen. “We must first put in place a multilateral trading system by completing the ongoing WTO negotiation [and] correct historical imbalances to make this order more equitable and more accessible.”
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
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
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)