SMARTPHONES
HTC’s sales rise 5.04%
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday posted sales of NT$15.75 billion (US$516.73 million) for last month, up 5.04 percent from NT$14.99 billion a year ago. On a monthly basis, sales contracted 5.74 percent from September’s NT$16.71 billion, according to a company statement.
PANELMAKERS
Wintek revenue plunges
Touchpanel maker Wintek Corp (勝華) yesterday said revenue fell 6.36 percent to NT$5.76 billion last month, from NT$5.42 billion in September. On an annual basis, revenue plunged 20.18 percent from NT$7.22 billion. In the first 10 months of this year, revenue edged lower by 0.005 percent to NT$60.348 billion from NT$50.351 billion in the same period of last year.
PANELMAKERS
Innolux ‘still in loans talks’
Innolux Corp (群創光電), the nation’s largest LCD panel maker, yesterday said it was still in talks with local banks to arrange syndicated loans totaling NT$60 billion. Innolux dismissed a report by the Economic Daily News that local lenders rejected its borrowing plan after LED chipmaker Chi Mei Lighting Technology Corp (奇力光電) filed for bankruptcy. Innolux said that creditor banks have taken over Chi Mei following the firm’s announcement of bankruptcy. Innolux said state-owned Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) is in charge of its syndicated loans application and the loans are not affected by the bankruptcy.
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