CHINA
Factory output weakens
Factory output weakened last month while retail sales growth edged up, suggesting economic growth has yet to revive, despite repeated interest rate cuts and other stimulus. Factory output rose 5.6 percent, down from September’s 5.7 percent. Investment rose 10.2 percent in the first 10 months of the year, down from 10.3 percent in the first nine months, government data showed yesterday. Retail sales grew 11 percent over a year earlier, up from September’s 10.9 percent rate, the data showed.
AUTOMOBILES
BMW buys leasing firm
BMW AG agreed to buy Chinese car lease provider Herald International Financial Leasing Co (先鋒租賃) in an effort to boost sales as customers in the firm’s biggest market become more reluctant to pay for vehicles in cash. Herald operates in 58 Chinese cities and generated 208 million yuan (US$33 million) in revenue in the last financial year, BMW said yesterday.
AUTOMOBILES
EU seeks VW explanation
EU regulators have given Volkswagen 10 days to clarify its own admission that nearly a million of the company’s cars emit more carbon dioxide pollution than originally claimed, the European Commission said on Tuesday. In a letter sent on Monday, European Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete asked VW chief executive Matthias Mueller to clearly specify which cars were affected by the “irregularities.”
REAL ESTATE
Canada wants more data
Canada’s housing agency is considering ways to collect more data on foreign investment as home prices continue to surge in Toronto and Vancouver. “It’s clear that we need to capture more detailed information on foreign investment, to better inform the Canadian government and housing market participants,” Evan Siddall chief executive officer of the Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp, said in the text of a speech delivered in Toronto. The Ottawa-based agency is considering several options, including getting information from local realtors, developers and land registry offices on annual residential sales to foreign buyers for both homes and condominium units.
INDONESIA
Content change a draw
A change in the government’s local-content guidelines to include research and development, rather than just manufacturing, convinced Apple Inc to invest in the country, Minister of Communications and Technology Rudiantara said yesterday. Rudiantara said he told Apple executives during a trip to Silicon Valley last month that the company would be able to “take the hardware route or the software and development route” to comply with a proposed new rule. The regulation would require foreign firms selling telephones in Indonesia from 2017 to use a minimum of 30 percent of domestically produced components.
AVIATION
US sues over Newark slots
The US Department of Justice is suing to block a deal between United and Delta Air Lines at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Federal officials on Tuesday said they are concerned that United’s planned acquisition of 24 takeoff and landing slots at the airport would result in fewer choices and higher fares for passengers. The lawsuit alleges that United already controls nearly 75 percent of the slots allocated by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
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