TAIWAN
Cheng appointed to FSC
The Executive Yuan yesterday appointed Agricultural Bank of Taiwan (全國農業金庫) president Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂) to serve as vice chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), effective Nov. 16. Cheng, who was known as a capable researcher during his tenure as chief economist at Citibank Taiwan Ltd (花旗台灣), said that he passed four certification exams to shore up his knowledge of the insurance industry during his time as Agricultural Bank president. In related news, the commission said it is assessing measures to stimulate anemic turnover on the local bourse. These measures include lifting limits on day trading, encouraging the introduction of new exchange-traded funds and promoting listings of Taiwanese companies overseas, it said. Similar to many other major Asian markets, turnover on the local bourse has dwindled amid lingering uncertainties about the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike cycle and continued Brexit fallout, Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director-General Chou Hui-mei (周惠美) said, adding that the decline in the TAIEX’s daily transaction volume has been relatively mild when compared with the regional slowdown.
MOBILES
Ichia sales continue to slide
Handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) yesterday reported sales of NT$501.81 million (US$15.9 million) for last month, a decline of 16.03 percent from NT$597.6 million in the same period last year and 11.14 percent from the previous month’s NT$564.73 million. The result marked the company’s 24th consecutive month of annual decline in revenue, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed. Ichia’s revenue totaled NT$4.94 billion in the first 10 months of this year, dropping 21.8 percent from NT$6.31 billion in the same period last year, the filing said.
EMPLOYMENT
Fewer workers on furlough
The number of workers on unpaid leave decreased in the second half of last month, while the number of employers that had unpaid leave programs in place increased from the first half of the month, government statistics released yesterday showed. As of Monday, a total of 350 workers were on furlough, down one from the first half of last month, Ministry of Labor data showed. Meanwhile, 24 employers had unpaid leave programs in place, compared with 22 in the first two weeks of the month, the ministry said. Most of the companies that had employees on unpaid leave were small firms with fewer than 50 employees, the ministry said. The furloughs, usually of one to four days per month, do not last for more than three months, the ministry said. To reduce the financial impact on workers who have been on unpaid leave, the government has implemented a NT$20 billion program to offer them training to upgrade their skills.
TRANSPORTATION
Gogoro S sales reach 100
Electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) said it has sold 100 units of its latest high-performance model, the Gogoro S, in just three days. Launched on Friday last week, the new model can accelerate from zero to 50kph in 3.7 seconds, the company said. In September, Gogoro saw its new vehicle sales reach 1,642 units, the highest in the firm’s history over the same period. The company has seized a nearly 80 percent share of the nation’s electric scooter market.
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