COLOMBIA
Farmers persist with strike
The government raised a subsidy to coffee farmers on Saturday and called for them to end a strike, but farm leaders said they would continue protesting and blocking roads because they want buyers to pay a minimum price for beans. Coffee growers in the nation, the world’s top producer of high-quality Arabica beans, are demanding more help from the government after being hit by years of poor weather, crop disease and a strong currency. The government has offered to increase a subsidy to 115,000 pesos (US$63.41) from 60,000 pesos previously paid for a 125kg sack of parchment coffee for small producers when the internal coffee price is below 650,000 pesos. The subsidy also increases to 95,000 pesos, from 60,000 previously, for big land owners.
JAPAN
Weaker yen helps exports
The nation’s exporters expect to be profitable as a weaker currency helps boost the yen value of their overseas earnings, according to a survey of companies released by the Cabinet Office. Shipments will yield profit if the exchange rate averages ¥83.9 against the US dollar, according to the survey of 2,374 companies in January. The yen will probably trade at ¥88.4 per US dollar in one year’s time, according to the average expectation of companies in the survey. The numbers compare with a forecast of profitability at ¥82 versus an expected exchange rate of ¥80.3 in a similar survey a year earlier. Toyota Motor Corp, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd, the maker of Subaru cars, and Nintendo Co have all raised their profit forecasts for the fiscal year that ends this month as the weaker yen boosts overseas sales when earnings are repatriated.
AUTOMAKERS
EU car sales plummet
Plunging prices and over-capacity will again this year cast a shadow over the Geneva International Motor Show, which begins this week, but plenty of luxury racing dreams should still be prominently on display. The European auto industry got off to a bad start in January, when new car registrations in the EU plummeted to their lowest level since 1990 after an already catastrophic previous year. Only 12 million cars were sold last year — the lowest number since 1995. Switzerland, the host of what is one of the auto industry’s biggest events, is a rare bright spot on the crisis-hit continent. The Swiss, who do not belong to the EU, saw new car registrations jump 2.4 percent last year from an already record year in 2011, with 431,000 new registrations. Stefan Bratzel, a German car industry analyst, expects to see sales across Europe slip 5 percent this year and predicts that the mood in Geneva will be jaded.
TECHNOLOGY
Evernote reports hacking
Evernote, a Web-based note-sharing service, said it was resetting the passwords of its 50 million users because hackers managed to breach its computer network and access some usernames, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords. Evernote spokeswoman Ronda Scott said via e-mail on Saturday that the attack “follows a similar pattern” to other cyberattacks on Internet-based companies in recent weeks, but did not elaborate. Scott declined to say how many accounts had been exposed or whether it might be possible for the hackers to unscramble encrypted passwords. A series of technology companies including Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Twitter, have recently disclosed cyberattacks.
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