TELECOMS
No change in HTC holdings
Cher Wang (王雪紅), chairwoman of smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電), has not raised her holdings in the company for 10 months, statistics released yesterday by the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed. Wang owns 32.27 million shares of the company. The stock exchange’s statistics also showed that HTC chief executive Peter Chou (周永明) has not raised his holdings in the smartphone supplier since December, when he had 4.47 million shares.
Executives of listed companies tend to purchase shares of their own firms to boost investor confidence. HTC’s stock fell 1.72 percent to close at NT$285 yesterday.
ELECTRONICS
Foxconn plants improving
A labor group Apple Inc joined to assess working conditions at three manufacturing plants in China where its products are made says conditions are improving, but employees are still working more hours than the country’s legal limit. The Fair Labor Association said on Thursday that Apple’s largest supplier, Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has made all recommended improvements to working conditions that were due by the end of December. The group says there have been “notable increases” in workers’ participation in union committees. Foxconn has reduced working hours, though not enough to comply with China’s legal limit of 49 hours per week. Foxconn is scheduled to do that by July.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is