FASHION
Fakes cost EU US$28bn
Counterfeits are worth nearly 10 percent of the clothes, shoes and accessories sold in the EU, taking away more than 26 billion euros (US$28 billion) in business, according to a study released on Tuesday. The report estimated the direct impact on Italy to be the highest in Europe at 4.5 billion euros per year and nearly 50,000 jobs. The study by the EU’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market put direct annual losses to the industry from counterfeit clothing, footwear and accessories at approximately 26.3 billion euros, or 9.7 percent of the sector’s sales. If knock-on effects on other industries and lost government revenue are included, the economic impact rises to 43.3 billion euros per year.
MACROECONOMICS
Inflation rose 0.7% in Q2
Australian consumer prices rose 0.7 percent in the April-to-June period, as gasoline prices increased, official data showed yesterday, but annual inflation was soft, giving the central bank leeway to lower interest rates. The consumer price index increase in the second-quarter followed a 0.2 percent lift in the first three months of the year and took headline inflation to 1.5 percent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported.
ENERGY
UAE scraps oil subsidies
Leading oil producer the United Arab Emirates is to scrap subsidies on gasoline and diesel from next month to cut spending as low crude prices hit revenues, the Ministry of Energy said yesterday. Pump prices for the two fuels are now to be set on the basis of world prices and adjusted each month, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official WAM news agency. The move is expected to save billions of US dollars a year.
TRANSPORTATION
Eurotunnel seeks damages
Eurotunnel, the company that runs the cross-Channel rail tunnel, yesterday said it was seeking 9.7 million euros from the British and French governments in compensation for disruption caused by illegal migrants. The firm said it was seeking the amount from London and Paris after it incurred a security bill of 13 million euros in the first half of the year trying to stop migrants crossing to England from France. The amount was equivalent to its entire costs in the sector for all of last year.
AIRLINES
AirAsia to fly to Japan
AirAsia Bhd yesterday said it would start domestic and international flights from Japan early next year, after a high-profile exit from the market following the collapse of its joint venture with All Nippon Airways (ANA) in 2013. The Malaysia-based company said it has applied to Japan’s transport ministry to operate commercial flights, becoming the latest budget carrier aiming to crack a market long-controlled by ANA and Japan Airlines.
CAMERAS
GoPro beats profit forecasts
Action camera maker GoPro Inc on Tuesday reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue, helped by strong sales in markets outside North America. GoPro, whose helmet and body-mounted cameras are popular with surfers, skydivers and other adventure sports enthusiasts, said its net income rose to US$35 million, or US$0.24 per share, for the second quarter from a loss of US$19.8 million, or US$0.24 per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned US$0.35 per share. Revenue rose 71.7 percent to US$419.9 million.
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