ITALY
Jobless rate hits 8.9%
The jobless rate rose to its highest level in eight years in December last year as austerity measures meant to fight the debt crisis helped push the region’s third-largest economy toward a recession. Unemployment climbed to 8.9 percent, the highest since data collecting began in January 2004, from a revised 8.8 percent in November, national statistics institute Istat said in a preliminary report in Rome. Economists had expected a rate of 8.7 percent, according to the median of 9 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Prime Minister Mario Monti last month pushed through 20 billion euros (US$26 billion) in tax increases and spending cuts that have further choked growth. The economy shrank 0.2 percent in the third quarter and the government has forecast another contraction in the final three months of last year, meaning Italy might already be in a recession.
JAPAN
Industrial output surprises
Uncertain post-catastrophe economic recovery appeared to be tentatively gaining traction yesterday as official data showed industrial output rose by more than expected in December last year. With predictions for further rises in the coming months and production levels in key sectors of the economy now higher than before the earthquake-and-tsunami disaster of March last year, analysts said there were signs of light. However, they cautioned that worldwide economic weakness and Europe’s debt problems could still stymie any real gains for the nation, while a strong yen would continue to make life hard for exporters. Figures showed industrial output was up 4 percent in December from November, beating market expectations of a 2.8 percent rise and reversing a 2.7 percent fall in November.
GLOBAL TRADE
China loses WTO appeal
China lost an appeal at the WTO on Monday after complaints about its restrictions on raw-material exports, but it will to be able to maintain its supply stranglehold on rare earths, crucial ingredients in many high-tech products. A WTO panel on Monday said Beijing violated global trading rules by restricting exports of raw materials such as bauxite, coke, magnesium, manganese and zinc, which inflated prices and gave Chinese firms an unfair competitive advantage. Many countries later said China was choking off global supplies of rare-earth metals, causing prices to rocket. A number of US lawmakers urged Washington to use the decision to launch a new case to force Beijing to lift its rare-earth export restrictions.
SEMICONDUCTORS
ARM Q4 sales rise
ARM Holdings PLC, whose chip designs are used in Apple Inc’s iPad, said fourth-quarter revenue climbed 21 percent as the company increased the number of licenses sold for smartphones and tablet computers. Fourth-quarter sales rose to £137.8 million (US$217 million) from £113.9 million a year earlier, the Cambridge, England-based company said in a statement. That beat analysts’ estimates for revenue of £127 million, according to a Bloomberg survey. ARM, with its low-power designs, is seeking to broaden its range of products, as it takes on Intel Corp. The company’s processor designs will be in almost one-quarter of all notebook computers shipped in 2015, according to researchers at IHS Inc. “ARM has seen strong licensing growth, driven by market-leading semiconductor companies increasing their commitment to ARM technology, and more new customers choosing ARM technology for the first time,” CEO Warren East said in the statement.
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