ELECTRONICS
Innolux retains top spot
Taiwanese flat-panel maker Innolux Corp (群創光電) retained its title as the world’s largest 4K2K ultra high definition TV panel supplier last month, Chinese-language Web site DigiTimes said on Saturday. Amid inventory adjustments by global flat screen business last month, Innolux accounted for more than 65 percent of the world’s 4K2K TV screen shipments, DigiTimes said. Since China ended its year-long subsidy program for TV purchases on May 31, TV screen makers have been adjusting inventories amid signs of cooling demand, DigiTimes added. Last month, Chinese TV brand TCL, suffered a 35 percent fall in shipments from a year earlier, while rival Skyworth’s (創惟) shipments fell 17 percent month-on-month, DigiTimes said. Buying during China’s May 1 Labor Day holiday failed to boost 4K2K TV sales significantly, prompting flat-panel makers to be more cautious about 4K2K panel shipments, DigiTimes said.
ENERGY
Gasoline prices to rise
The nation’s oil refiners yesterday announced they would raise their gasoline and diesel product prices, effective today. CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) are to increase gasoline and diesel prices by NT$0.5 per liter after global crude oil prices rose last week due to a decline in US crude inventories and expectations of increasing demand as the market enters the summer season, CPC said. It said the price hikes reflected a 2.02 percent increase in its average crude oil costs of US$104.91 per barrel last week from the previous week. Formosa said global crude oil prices also rose last week due to increased concerns about oil supply from the Middle East following Egypt’s political tensions. The company said it would match CPC’s price adjustments.
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