TRADE
S Korea nominates WTO head
Seoul on Friday nominated South Korean Minster for Trade Bark Taeho to lead the WTO, making him the eighth candidate to be put forward for the top job. Bark’s candidacy was submitted three days before nominations close and as Pascal Lamy, the global trade body’s current director general, prepares to step down on Aug. 31. Although Lamy has said his successor should be chosen on the basis of competence alone, some trade diplomats say it is the turn of a developing country to hold the job. Bark is the second candidate from a rich country and the third from the Asia-Pacific to apply. More could be put forward before the deadline of midnight on Monday.
CHINA
Court rules against Apple
A court has ordered Apple Inc to pay 1.03 million yuan (US$165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies who say unlicensed copies of their work were distributed through Apple’s online store. The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court ruled on Thursday that Apple violated the writers’ copyrights by allowing applications containing their work to be distributed through its App Store, according to an official who answered the phone at the court and said he was the judge in the case. He refused to give his name, as is common among Chinese officials. The award was less than the 12 million yuan sought by the authors.
PAKISTAN
YouTube block to be lifted
Authorities were expected to unblock access to the popular video sharing Web site YouTube yesterday after taking measures to filter blasphemous material and pornography, a Cabinet minister said. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in September ordered the blocking of YouTube after the US-based Web site refused to heed the government’s call to remove a controversial anti-Islam video. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Twitter the decision to allow access was due to huge public demand, and that the telecoms regulator would install a firewall to maintain a block on unseemly content.
FRANCE
Minister keeps growth target
Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said he is maintaining an economic growth target of 0.8 percent for next year even after the economy grew less than initially reported in the third quarter. Reaching that goal will depend in part on how economic actors react to changes in banking regulation and on other efforts to try to halt the crisis in the euro zone, as well as on growth in the US, Moscovici said. GDP rose 0.1 percent in the third quarter, half the pace estimated on Nov. 15, statistics institute Insee said on Friday.
ENTERTAINMENT
Netflix CEO’s fee doubled
Netflix Inc, the world’s largest video-subscription service, doubled the annual compensation of chairman and chief executive officer Reed Hastings to US$4 million. Hastings, 52, will receive US$2 million in salary next year, along with US$2 million in stock options, according to a regulatory filing today by the Los Gatos, California-based company. The executive received a US$500,000 salary this year and US$1.5 million in option allowances, a reduction in stock compensation from last year.
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