STEELMAKERS
CSC profit surges
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s biggest steelmaker, yesterday said pre-tax profit last month surged to NT$3.19 billion (US$101.4 million), the highest level since August 2010, because of better profit margin. Last month’s figures were 15.5 percent higher than the previous month and brought aggreate pre-tax profit for the first seven months of the year to NT$11.04 billion, or NT$0.7 per share, the company said in a statement. Revenue last month was NT$24.5 billion. Analysts said the company’s pre-tax profit for this quarter would continue rising from last quarter’s NT$7.02 billion due to steady steel prices and a better outlook for the second half of the year.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Firms invest in Hike
Foxconn Singapore Pte Ltd and Wonderful Stars Pte Ltd — which are Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) subsidiaries — have acquired a combined 5.26 percent stake in India’s Hike Global Pte Lte for US$74.99 million as a long-term investment, Hon Hai said yesterday in filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Hike is the largest instant-messaging app provider in India and has more than 100 million registered users. Separately, Hon Hai’s handset making subsidiary, FIH Mobile Limited (富智康), filed with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd regarding a strategic investment in Hike, saying the deal will help Hon Hai to build close relationship with the Indian company.
AIRLINES
El Salvador flights launched
EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest airline, yesterday said it and its Star Alliance partner in Central America, Avianca, have launched codeshare flights between Taiwan and El Salvador via Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York. The flights will expand the Taiwanese carrier’s network in Central America, where it previously offered flights between Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Panama City via Los Angeles from 1995 to 2000. EVA Airways said it will continue to evaluate other possible coreshare deals so that it can offer flights to more Central and South American cities.
CHIPMAKERS
Intel inks ARM accord
Intel Corp said it is to license technology from rival ARM Holdings PLC in a move to win more customers for its business manufacturing chips for other companies. The accord, unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, will let Intel offer third-party semiconductor companies its most advanced 10-nanometer production lines for manufacturing the complex chips usually used in smartphones. Adding licenses for ARM’s technology could open up that business to fabricating chips based on those designs for companies such as Qualcomm Inc and Apple Inc, which now have their chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and others.
FURNITURE
IKEA recall reminder issued
The Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection on Tuesday said that consumers can obtain full refunds if they have purchased Swedish furniture retailer Ikea’s recalled Malm dressers. Several children have been killed in the US after Malm dressers toppled over on them, prompting Ikea to recall the product at the end of June. Ikea has sold 14,526 three-drawer dressers, 13,434 four-drawer dressers and 3,558 six-drawer dressers in Taiwan, with 80 full or partial refunds thus far, while it has provided 30 wall-anchoring kits, the company 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