TRADE
Yen course favorable: Kuan
The continued depreciation of the Japanese yen is a “mixed blessing” to Taiwan, Minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) said on Saturday. Kuan made the remarks on the sidelines of a speech. He said a lot of raw materials and semi-finished products are imported from Japan, so the yen’s depreciation can be favorable to Taiwan. Kuan said that the impact of depreciation of the yen on the nation’s economy will have to be observed for a period of time.
TECHNOLOGY
Facebook app updated
Facebook Inc’s Home launcher is now available for HTC Corp’s (宏達電) new smartphone, as the official Facebook app received an update hours after the world’s largest social network said on Thursday that Facebook Home had almost hit 1 million downloads. Users of Samsung Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia ZL can also receive unofficial support for the app, as their devices will show an option to “Use Home Anyway” after installation, Web site Android Central reported on Thursday.
FINANCE
Holdings’ profit falls
The nation’s 15 listed financial holding companies registered a fall of almost 30 percent in net profit last month, statistics showed on Saturday. Last month, the 15 financial holding firms recorded NT$16.01 billion (US$537 million) in net profit, down 29.45 percent from a month earlier, according the statistics. Analysts said the decline partly reflected shrinking profitability of these companies’ banking operations. In the first four months of the year, the companies recorded NT$103.35 billion in net profit.
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