STEELMAKERS
FPG starts Vietnam plant
Formosa Plastics Group’s (FPG, 台塑集團) Vietnam-based subsidiary, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業), yesterday said the No. 1 blast furnace of its steel complex was ignited on Tuesday evening for a test run. In a sign that the complex, which is in the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh Province, was on track to prepare for formal production, it produced its first steel slab at 8:45am yesterday, marking a first step toward commercial production, FPG said. Formosa Ha Tinh Steel’s major shareholders include FPG, China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Japanese firm JFE Steel Corp, and it had faced repeated delays in production since construction of the facility started in December 2013 due to various industrial incidents, as well as anti-Chinese protests.
MANUFACTURING
Wistron invests for iPhone
Wistron Corp’s (緯創) board on Wednesday approved an additional capital injection of US$200 million for its plant in Kunshan, China. Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said in a note that the company might use the sizeable investment in the Kunshan plant to expand its capacity for Apple iPhone manufacturing next year. Wistron has been manufacturing large-sized iPhones, from 6 Plus to 7 Plus, and would likely manufacture the 8 Plus model, Yuanta said yesterday. The brokerage said the announcement suggested that Wistron would continue to gain order allocation for iPhones. Yuanta said it has raised its iPhone shipment forecasts for Wistron from 15 million to 17 million units this year and from 24 million to 27 million units for next year, or an 8 percent to 10 percent share of total iPhone orders.
CLOUD SERVICES
MiTAC transitions to software
Contract server maker MiTAC Holdings Corp (神達控股) yesterday said it is targeting a turnaround in the company’s mobile segment this year, citing software orders’ contribution to earnings. MiTAC was a desktop assembler, but now focuses on its cloud and mobile businesses. The cloud business accounted for more than 80 percent and mobile segment for more than 10 percent of the company’s total sales last year, MiTAC president Billy Ho (何繼武) said at Computex Taipei. Ho said the company has been transforming into a software solution service provider by offering automotive navigation software and medical use-related software. Revenue from software services is estimated to reach more than NT$100 million (US$3.32 million) this year and the figure could grow to NT$1 billion by 2020, he said.
LABOR
Cross-sector salary freeze
About 79 percent of companies in Taiwan’s industrial and service sectors froze salaries last year, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS). Only 20.9 percent of companies in the sectors gave pay raises, while 0.4 percent cut pay, according to the survey, which was conducted in February.
UTILITIES
CPC hikes gas price
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday announced liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices would rise this month, while prices for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) would remain unchanged. Effective today, average prices for LNG per cubic meter are to increase by 2.99 percent from last month, CPC said. As a result, an average consumption of between 30m3 and 45m3 of LNG per month would mean increased costs of between NT$8.4 and NT$12.6 per household, CPC said.
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
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
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