AUTOMAKERS
Jaguar unveils new range
British luxury automaker Jaguar unveiled a US$2.4 billion investment in a new range of lightweight aluminum sports and cross-over cars aimed at the mass market, a plan it said would create 1,700 jobs in the UK. The spending is part of a move to launch more affordable models from 2015 to emulate the success of lower cost luxury vehicles made by its sister company Land Rover. Carmakers around the world are expanding into so-called premium “crossover” vehicles, seeking to tap demand for models that combine the functionality of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) with the comfort and performance of luxury cars. The new models will be built on production lines previously used to make Land Rover vehicles at JLR’s plant in Solihull, central England, where some 1,700 new jobs will be created.
AVIATION
Boeing to boost deliveries
Boeing Co will boost plane deliveries to Chinese customers by 50 percent this year to meet rising demand for air travel. The planemaker will ship more than 120 aircraft to carriers in the country, up from 80 last year, Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing at Chicago-based Boeing, said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We’ve seen strong domestic demand in China,” Tinseth said. Boeing raised its 20-year demand forecast for China’s aircraft market last week, at least the fourth straight year in which the company has increased its estimate for the world’s second-biggest economy. The planemaker has maintained its sales target for India, where aircraft demand is withstanding a record drop in the value of the country’s currency, chief executive officer James McNerney said on Saturday.
TELECOMS
EU presents telecoms plan
The EU is to present a radical shake-up of the telecoms sector today, aiming to enforce a single telecoms market and remove unpopular mobile phone roaming charges it claims are unjustified. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will unveil the plans to the European Parliament in his last annual “State of the Union” address before elections in May for a new executive and legislature. EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Nellie Kroes has insisted for months that it is essential the EU act now or risk losing out on the economic benefits that a fully liberalised telecoms sector could offer in a single market of 500 million people. Last month, a Kroes report showed that the cost of making mobile phone calls in the EU was like a lottery, with huge discrepancies across the 28 member states. The long-anticipated reform package will accordingly range widely — regulation is likely to be simplified to set up a ‘one-stop’ shop for operators.
ITALY
Growth estimate downgraded
Italy yesterday downgraded its estimate for growth in the second quarter, saying the economy shrank by 0.3 percent in April to June instead of 0.2 percent initially calculated. GDP also contracted by 2.1 percent on a 12-month comparison, worse than the preliminary estimate issued last month of 2 percent, the official Istat data agency said in a statement. The nation has been stuck in recession for two years and officials say a tentative recovery could begin later this year, although they are forecasting the economy will contract by 1.4 percent overall this year. “Recent indicators show a gradual improvement,” Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco said in a speech yesterday, adding that “the decline in production should cease in the next few months.”
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to