ECONOMY
ECB may cut growth outlook
The European Central Bank (ECB) is likely to lower its growth forecasts for the eurozone, governing council member and Austrian central bank Governor Ewald Nowotny was quoted as saying yesterday. “There won’t be any improvement [in the prognosis], more likely there will be a worsening,” Nowotny was quoted as saying by Dow Jones Newswires on the sidelines of an economic conference in Alpbach, Austria, late on Thursday. The ECB is due to issue its new quarterly forecast at its meeting on Thursday next week.
TRADE
Lamy sees below 4% growth
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy confirmed on Thursday that growth in global trade would remain below 4 percent this year and urged governments against protectionism. Annual growth in world trade has averaged 6 percent over the past 15 years, but this year “we will be below 4 percent,” Lamy told France’s BFM radio, blaming the slowdown on a sluggish world economy. In April, the WTO warned that global growth would weaken again this year and rise by 5.6 percent next year.
AIRLINES
Lufthansa crews on strike
Lufthansa flight attendants are on strike at Germany’s busiest airport, causing the cancelation of dozens of flights. The cabin crews walked off the job early yesterday morning at Frankfurt airport in an eight-hour strike that is to last until early afternoon. The UFO union says it will continue staging short-term strikes until its demands for better pay and conditions for about 18,000 cabin crew are met. Lufthansa says it has canceled about a quarter of the 360 flights at the airport that were scheduled during the strike hours, all short and middle-distance routes.
TOYS
Girls’ toy lifts Lego profits
Danish toy maker Lego says a new series it created specifically for girls has proved popular despite being criticized for fueling gender stereotypes and has propelled first-half net profits to 2 billion kroner (US$336 million), up 35 percent from the same period last year. The family-owned firm says sales rose 24 percent to 9.1 billion kroner. The company sold twice as many LEGO Friends sets as expected during the first half.
MEDIA
Bertelsmann cautious
German media giant Bertelsmann yesterday issued cautious full-year forecasts despite posting strong profits in the first six months of the year. “The subdued economic prospects and the euro crisis, whose repercussions are challenging to gauge, make it difficult to predict future developments at this time,” Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe said in a statement. In the first six months, Bertelsmann’s net profit jumped 52 percent to 279 million euros (US$349 million) on a 5 percent rise in revenues to 7.572 billion euros.
OIL
Russia is PRC’s top source
Russia is shipping more oil than Iran to China for the first time since at least 2004 after the world’s largest energy user financed a pipeline and field expansion in the former Soviet Union to secure fuel supplies. China, which will account for a third of this year’s global growth in oil demand, boosted imports from Russia by 37 percent in the first seven months of the year, according to the Beijing-based Customs General Administration. Exports from Iran dropped 22 percent in the same period as Tehran’s output slumped and international sanctions took effect.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
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