TELECOMS
Motorola loses patent suit
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc, which has won two rulings against Apple Inc in Germany, failed to win a third in a patent case involving the use of mathematical sequences in mobile telecommunications. The Regional Court in Mannheim rejected the suit yesterday. Motorola Mobility did not show that Apple violated its patent, Presiding Judge Andreas Voss said when delivering the ruling. More cases between the two companies are pending in German courts, including a bid by Motorola Mobility to enforce its first win from December, which briefly forced Apple to remove some older iPhone and iPad models from its online store in Germany last week. Google Inc is buying Illinois-based Motorola Mobility to gain mobile patents and expand its hardware business.
OIL
IEA trims growth forecast
The International Energy Agency (IEA) trimmed its forecast for oil demand growth as a result of gloomy economic prospects, but said yesterday that markets were taking tougher international sanctions on Iran in their stride. The agency cut its forecast for growth in oil demand this year to 0.8 million barrels per day (mbd), from 1.1mbd, after the IMF slashed its estimate for global economic growth from 4 percent to 3.3 percent this year. The agency was largely sanguine about the impact of tighter international sanctions on Iran, including an EU import ban which takes effect in July. The new forecast for global oil demand of 89.9mbd, is slightly higher that that of the OPEC oil producers cartel, which trimmed its demand forecast for this year on Thursday to 88.76mbd.
AUSTRALIA
Central bank cuts forecasts
The central bank yesterday trimmed its growth and inflation forecasts for the year to June and signaled it has leeway to cut interest rates amid uncertainty over the eurozone debt crisis. In its quarterly statement on monetary policy, the bank said economic growth in the year to June was expected to be 3.5 percent, down from the 4 percent it forecast in November last year. The bank left its outlook for GDP for this year unchanged at between 3 percent and 3.5 percent. Underlying inflation was forecast to be at 2.25 percent in the 12 months to June compared with its previous estimate of 2.5 percent, within the bank’s 2 percent to 3 percent target band. The bank said uncertainty about Europe’s debt crisis had weighed on household and business confidence and while strong growth was expected in the mining sector, other parts of the economy would continue to struggle.
INVESTMENT
Fund bets on US Treasuries
Pacific Investment Management Co’s Bill Gross increased his holdings of US Treasuries to the highest level since July 2010, while Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman Warren Buffett called them “dangerous.” Gross boosted US government and Treasury debt to 38 percent of assets in Pimco’s US$250.5 billion Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest bond fund. The position last month climbed from 30 percent in December, according to a report on the company’s Web site on Thursday. The billionaire investor, said taxes and inflation should dissuade investors from debt. That puts him in the same camp as Laurence Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest money manager, who said this week investors should have 100 percent of their holdings in equities because they offer higher returns than bonds.
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