MICROCHIPS
Low orders from chipmakers
Applied Materials Inc, the largest maker of machinery used to build computer chips, forecast fiscal fourth-quarter sales that might fall short of analysts’ estimates on lower-than-expected orders from some outsourcing chipmakers. Revenue in the three months ending in October will be unchanged to down 7 percent from the previous period, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement on Thursday. That indicates sales of as low as US$2.32 billion, compared with an average analyst estimate of US$2.52 billion. The company is now predicting the overall market for equipment is to be unchanged from last year and might even shrink, chief executive officer Gary Dickerson said.
ECONOMY
EU GDP growth up 0.3%
The eurozone economy grew by less than expected in the second quarter, the EU’s statistics office said in its first estimate published yesterday. Eurostat said GDP in the 19-country euro area grew by 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter in the April-June period, for a 1.2 percent year-on-year rise. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.4 percent quarterly expansion and a 1.3 percent annual gain. The relatively slow growth came despite a large monetary stimulus from the European Central Bank and a weak euro helping exporters. “Looking ahead, business surveys suggest that the euro zone economy will continue to expand, led by strong growth in Spain and a solid German economy. But they offer little hope that the recovery will gain pace,” Capital Economics said in a note. “Indeed, we think it is more likely that growth in the region as a whole will slow further in the second half of the year.”
INSURANCE
Swiss Life beats predictions
Swiss Life Holding AG, Switzerland’s biggest life insurer, beat analysts’ first-half profit estimates, led by revenue from fees and commissions. Net income rose to 490 million Swiss francs (US$511 million) from SF484 million a year earlier, the Zurich-based company said yesterday. That beat the SF452 million average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Gross written premiums rose to SF11 billion from SF10.8 billion, while fee and commission income advanced 5 percent to SF612 million. Swiss Life chief executive officer Patrick Frost has been seeking to boost profitability and cut costs as low interest rates weigh on earnings.
INTERNET
Australian court caps fine
An Australian court yesterday forced makers of the film Dallas Buyers Club to cap penalties for illegal downloaders, a ruling welcomed by Internet companies as a “knockout blow” to the controversial tactic of threatening pirates into paying fines. The ruling puts Australia at odds with the US, UK, Canada and Germany where content owners have been allowed to send letters to suspected illegal downloaders demanding thousands of dollars to drop legal action, a measure known as “speculative invoicing.” In a lawsuit seen as a test of whether the practice is to be allowed in Australia, where a third of adults admit to stealing online, the studio, Voltage Pictures, wanted iiNet and five smaller Internet companies to hand over the addresses of 4,276 suspected offenders, but the Federal Court refused their request, saying it would only make the Internet companies hand over customer details if the producers promised to charge only the cost of buying a copy of the film.
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