RETAIL
Starbucks eyes drip coffee
President Starbucks Coffee Corp (統一星巴克) yesterday said it would introduce a new store style by launching four coffee shops in Taiwan this year to sell drip coffee products, including a new outlet in Hsinchu. Overall, the company plans to expand its total outlets in the nation from 286 to 300 by the end of this year, President Starbucks president John Hsu (徐光宇) said.
SEMICONDUCTORS
DRAM growth forecast
The global output of DRAM chips is expected to grow 31 percent to US$34.6 billion this year from last year, thanks to recent consolidation in this sector and rising demand for mobile memory, TrendForce Corp said yesterday. DRAM prices have moved sharply higher in recent months, it said. The average contract price of the benchmark DDR3 4Gb DRAM chip in the first half of this month rose more than 8 percent from the second half of last month to US$25.5 and it could hit US$30 in the near future, TrendForce said.
MANUFACTURING
Chunghwa Picture improves
Flat-panel maker Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管) said on Wednesday its losses improved 25 percent to NT$489 million (US$16.36 million) last month from a month ago, bringing the company’s first-quarter loss to NT$2 billion, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The company reported losses of NT$1.72 billion in the final quarter of last year.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by