TAIEX continues advance
The TAIEX yesterday edged higher for the eighth consecutive session, finishing up 19.74 points, or 0.26 percent, at 7,599.91 on turnover of NT$81.39 billion (US$2.8 billion).
A total of 2,246 stocks closed up, 2,205 finished down and 616 remained unchanged.
Most of the market’s eight major stock categories closed up, with textile shares scoring the highest gains, finishing up 0.38 percent.
Fewer workers on forced leave
The number of workers on unpaid leave dropped by 20, or 0.5 percent, from two weeks earlier, the Council of Labor Affairs reported yesterday.
As of the end of last month, 4,323 workers from 49 companies had reached agreements with their employees to take unpaid leave, council statistics showed.
The number represented a decrease from Nov. 16, when 4,343 workers from 49 companies were reported on furlough, the highest level in the past six months.
HTC still fifth in US: survey
HTC Corp (宏達電) remains the fifth-largest mobile phone vendor in the US, but has lost market share to Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc, according to data compiled recently by the research firm comScore.
In a survey of more than 30,000 US mobile subscribers from August to October, the research firm found that Samsung was the top handset vendor overall, with a market share of 26.3 percent, up from 25.6 percent in the May-July period.
For the first time on record, Apple ranked second, with a market share of 17.8 percent, up 1.5 percentage points from the previous three months.
It was followed by LG Electronics Inc with 17.6 percent, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc with 11 percent and HTC with 6 percent.
Android device makers Motorola, LG and HTC all lost market share, dropping by 0.8, 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points respectively, the survey showed.
IC output up 4.9% in Q3
Third-quarter IC production rose 4.9 percent from the previous quarter to NT$439.7 billion (US$15.14 billion), the Industry and Technology Intelligence Services (ITIS) said in a recent report.
The growth of the local IC industry, including design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, was driven mainly by growing demand for smartphones, tablets and digital TVs, the research institute under the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
For the full year, production output is expected to increase 4.3 percent to NT$1.62 trillion, the institute said.
Intel tech chief visiting
Intel Corp’s chief technology officer is scheduled to visit the nation today to share his vision on the US chipmaker’s machine-to-machine communication technology in cooperation with a leading local university.
Justin Rattner, who also serves as director of the company’s primary research arm Intel Labs, will talk about Intel’s collaborative research with National Taiwan University, according to an invitation e-mailed to the media.
The Intel-NTU Connected Context Computing Center, aimed at providing end-to-end solutions for various kinds of devices, is the US company’s first research center on machine-to-machine communication technology to promote knowledge innovation.
NT weakens against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday slid NT$0.005 to close at NT$29.121 against the US dollar. Turnover was US$709 million.
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