Investment targets on track
The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said investments from the private sector totaled NT$995.6 billion (US$32.99 billion) in the first 10 months of this year, 90.51 percent of its full-year target of NT$1.1 trillion.
New foreign investment hit US$8.85 billion in the January-to-October period, 98.36 percent of the ministry target of US$9 billion this year.
The ministry said it attracted NT$14.28 billion of investment from both domestic and foreign firms in the booming electric vehicle sector and related components during the first 10 months.
That amount already surpasses the ministry’s full-year target of NT$12 billion, it said.
Elpida sues Nanya Technology
Elpida Memory Inc said it has filed a patent lawsuit against Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) with the Taiwan Intellectual Property Court and the US International Trade Commission.
The Japanese chipmaker said in a statement yesterday that Nanya had violated its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) patents.
In September, Tokyo-based Elpida filed a complaint against Nanya Technology and its US unit in the Northern District Court of California, accusing the chipmaker of illegally using four of its patented technologies relating to DRAM manufacturing.
ITC delays S3 patent ruling
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has delayed until Monday its final ruling on a complaint filed by HTC Corp (宏達電) subsidiary S3 Graphics Co against Apple Inc.
The ITC was originally scheduled to release a final ruling on the case on Tuesday, but in a notice posted on its Web site, the agency said it had decided to extend the target date for the completion of the investigation “on certain electronic devices with image processing systems, components thereof and associated software that infringe patents asserted by S3.”
S3 accused Apple in May last year of violating four patents owned by the company.
The ITC handed down a preliminary ruling in the case on July 26, in which it found that Apple’s Mac OS X system had infringed on two of S3’s texture compression patents, but that the iPhone and iPad had not.
HP to launch its first ultrabook
Hewlett-Packard Co, which last month abandoned a proposal to spin off its PC unit, plans to introduce its first lightweight ultrabook laptop to compete with Apple Inc’s MacBook Air.
The HP Folio laptop has a 13.3-inch screen and weighs 1.5kg. The PC will go on sale on Dec. 7 priced at US$900, according to a statement.
It is Hewlett-Packard’s first entry into the ultrabook category of laptops created by chipmaker Intel Corp. The Folio features a metal case, 4 gigabytes of memory, a solid-state hard drive and Intel’s Core i5 chip, HP said in the statement.
The company said the Folio’s battery can run as long as nine hours without recharging.
Euro woes weaken NT dollar
The New Taiwan dollar fell against its US counterpart yesterday, declining NT$0.020 to close at NT$30.230, a reflection of the weakness of the currencies in the Asia-Pacific region because of concerns over rising borrowing costs in debt-ridden Italy, dealers said.
The fears over the debt problems in the eurozone escalated after 10-year Italian government bond yields jumped above 7 percent again overnight, which prompted traders to forecast that the European country might need a bailout, dealers said.
Turnover totaled US$674 billion during the trading session.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
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