LG Electronics Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) are joining Google Inc’s Internet-TV coalition and plan to begin unveiling new products during next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
LG plans to showcase products at the conference, with Samsung unveiling TVs later this year, Google said on Thursday in a blog posting. Google TV, introduced in 2010, also has the support of Marvell Technology Group Ltd and Sony Corp. Vizio Inc, another existing partner, will hold private demonstrations of new products at the electronics show as well.
“Google TV is about bringing new entertainment and innovation from the Web to TV,” Mountain View, California-based Google said on its blog. “Our team along with our partners are pleased to bring more Google TV powered products to more people, across more devices in more countries in 2012.”
Google is shoring up support for the effort following slow initial sales for Google TV products. A lack of authorized content from media companies has made it harder to attract consumers to the idea, and one early partner, set-top-box maker Logitech International SA, backed away from the coalition after disappointing orders.
Still, the platform has gained popularity since an updated version debuted in October, Google said. The company develops the software for the service and relies on TV and other electronics manufacturers to build products that work with the technology. Google is counting on the lineup to give it a foothold in consumers’ living rooms and challenge products from Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp.
“Since launching the update, we’ve seen our activation rates more than double ... We now have more than 150 apps, which developers have specifically built for TV,” Google said.
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