BANKING
Yuan deposits hit new high
The central bank said yesterday that 71.2 billion yuan (US$11.6 billion) had been deposited in Taiwan as of the end of last month, up from the 66.29 billion yuan recorded at the end of May, again marking the highest level in history. The outstanding balance of yuan deposits totaled 40.83 billion yuan in the 60 domestic banking units in Taiwan as of the end of last month, while those in the 55 offshore banking units totaled 30.36 billion yuan, according to data provided by the central bank. The amount remitted by Taiwanese totaled 37.52 billion yuan last month, statistics showed. Taiwanese banks settled a total of 99 billion yuan last month through the Bank of China’s (中國銀行) branch in Taipei.
COMPUTERS
Notebooks to drop 8.7%
Global shipments of notebook computers will decline this year due to the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, a local market research firm said. In a recent research note, WitsView forecast that only 169 million notebooks will be shipped worldwide this year, down 8.7 percent from last year. Squeezed by smartphones and tablets, notebooks are losing their market share, the research firm said. WitsView’s forecast was in line with that of Digitimes Research, which projected that global notebook shipments would decline more than 9 percent year-on-year to 177.23 million units this year.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li