DIPLOMACY
India allows steel plant
India’s environment ministry has cleared South Korean steel giant POSCO’s planned US$13 billion steel plant in eastern India, but has asked the company to spend more on social welfare, an official said on Friday. The clearance was given a few days ago and will allow POSCO to go ahead with the massive plant in Odisha State, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He did not give further details. The clearance came days before South Korean President Park Geun-hye is to begin a four-day visit to India on Wednesday. The Odisha steel plant would be the largest-ever foreign investment in India.
INTERNET
France battles US firms
France has started the year with an array of skirmishes against Amazon.com, Google Inc and other US Internet companies, in what is shaping up as a classic battle between comfortable Gallic tradition and disruptive modernity. On Thursday, the French Senate unanimously approved a bill that would ban Amazon from offering free shipping on books in France. Strongly endorsed by the French Ministry of Culture, the legislation is supposed to safeguard the existence of the country’s 3,500 bookstores, about 800 of which are independent. France’s national agency for data protection announced earlier that its sanctions committee had found Google to be in breach of privacy laws, based on the company’s March 2012 decision to merge different privacy policies for each of its services.
AUTOMAKERS
VW’s plans leaked
Volkswagen AG (VW), Europe’s largest automaker, will add a mid-sized sport-utility vehicle in the US and probably produce it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two people familiar with the matter said. The Chattanooga factory is favored over VW’s plant in Puebla, Mexico, to build the SUV for North American customers, said the people, who asked not to be identified speaking in advance of an official announcement. Any decision will be part of a wider move to sell the model in other markets, such as the Middle East or China, though the version sold in that country would probably be produced locally, one person said. VW has expanded to become the world’s third-biggest automaker, ranking behind Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Co, thanks to sales increases in countries such as China and Russia.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla to upgrade chargers
Tesla Motors Inc, which is under investigation by US regulators over fires in its Model S sedan after battery punctures, will upgrade wall-charger adapters following reports of overheating in garages. The charger connectors, which tether Tesla-issued cables to wall outlets, will be mailed out in the next two weeks, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview on Friday. Overheating can stem from inadequate household wiring, he said. The decision to provide the improved part follows a series of about a half-dozen incidents, described on a Tesla-owner Web site and in some cases relayed to US regulators, in which Model S wall plugs melted or smoked while vehicles were recharging. The redesigned adapter will include a thermal fuse designed to shut off charging if overheating is detected, Musk said.
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