ELECTRONICS
Computex eyes touch panels
The annual Computex Taipei trade show is to highlight touch-panel devices with screen sizes ranging from 3.5 inches to 80 inches, the organizers said. The Taipei Computer Association, one of the show’s organizers, said in a recent statement that the June 4 to June 8 show will provide one-stop shopping services to visitors and buyers, and offer specially tailored products showcasing different technologies. The touch technologies that will be on display include projective capacitive, resistive analogue, optical and surface acoustic wave touchscreens, the association said. Those technologies are compatible with different operating systems, including Microsoft Inc’s Windows 8, Windows 7 and XP, as well as Google Inc’s Android platform, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Bank cuts notebook forecast
British banking group Barclays PLC cut its quarterly growth forecast for second-quarter notebook computer shipments for the second time in a month yesterday. In a note, Barclays said it now expects shipments for the world’s top five contract notebook makers in the quarter to be flat, down from the 3 percent increase it forecast on April 12, when it first lowered its second-quarter growth projection. The revision came after tier-one notebook makers reported a 16 percent monthly decline in their shipments last month, below Barclays’ projection of a 12 percent fall and an average 10 percent fall over the past five Aprils.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the