COMMUNICATIONS
HTC One to go on sale
HTC Corp’s (宏達電) newest flagship smartphone will go on sale in Taiwan this week, telecommunications carriers said yesterday. Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) will sell both the black and silver versions of the HTC One with a 16-gigabyte (GB) storage capacity as soon as tomorrow, while Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) did not give a date for when they will begin to sell the black version of the 16GB model. Pricing for the 16GB HTC One will start from NT$19,900, while the 32GB and 64GB models will cost NT$21,900 and NT$24,900 respectively, HTC said. In contrast, the 16GB model of Apple Inc’s iPhone 5 starts from NT$21,900. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Securities upgraded its rating on HTC shares from “neutral” to “overweight” and raised its target price from NT$330 to NT$390. It was the brokerage’s second upgrade of HTC shares in two weeks.
COMMUNICATIONS
WeChat users won’t pay
Free mobile messaging service WeChat will lose a chunk of its users if rumors that it plans to start charging subscribers are true, a recent survey conducted by Avanti, a division of global market research firm TrendForce, showed. The survey found that more than 66 percent of WeChat users will stop using the service if it starts to charge, while nearly 25 percent said they believe the app will continue to be free. Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), which launched WeChat in 2011, has denied the rumors.
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