COMPUTERS
Taiwan 50 Index drops Acer
Shares of PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁) will be removed from the Taiwan 50 Index after a quarterly index review by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and FTSE Group, the exchange said on Wednesday. TWSE said that as Acer’s market capitalization was ranked 61st among the more-than 800 listed companies on the main board, the exchange and FTSE have decided to remove the stock from the Taiwan 50 Index, in which the constituents are among the top 50 in terms of market capitalization. However, it said Acer will be included in the Taiwan Mid-Cap 100 Index, whose constituents are smaller in market capitalization. The changes will take effect on Sept. 23. “The Taiwan 50 Index serves as one of the most important investment references to institutional investors. The removal is expected to cut Acer’s weighting in many fund managers’ portfolios,” Hua Nan Securities (華南永昌證券) analyst Stan Chang said yesterday.
APEC
Gou to speak at CEO summit
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) has been invited to speak at the APEC CEO summit next month about his company’s business strategy in the Asia-Pacific market. Summit sources said Gou was asked in the hope that he will share Hon Hai’s investment experience. Hon Hai has confirmed that Gou is expected to attend the summit, which will be held in Bali in early next month.
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
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
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