Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) is reportedly considering forming a strategic alliance with Macronix International Co (旺宏電子), the world’s No. 2 NOR flash memorychip maker, to help Hon Hai’s bid to acquire Toshiba Corp’s memorychip unit.
Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and General Interface Solution Holding Ltd (GIS, 業成) chairman Chou Hsien-ying (周賢穎) last month met several times with Macronix chairman Miin Wu (吳敏求) to discuss a potential alliance, as Macronix owns a large number of patents for memory products that could be used as a bargaining chip in the Toshiba bid, the Chinese-language newspaper Economic Daily News reported yesterday.
Toshiba on June 21 selected a consortium consisting of Innovation Network Corp of Japan, state-backed Development Bank of Japan, Bain Capital LP and South Korea’s SK Hynix as a “preferred bidder” for Toshiba Memory.
Gou on June 22 told an international news conference that the Japanese government and Toshiba had intentionally pushed Hon Hai out, despite the Hon Hai-led consortium, including Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc, offering a higher price.
Macronix in April filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Toshiba over Macronix’s memory products, including NAND and NOR flash memories used in mobile devices and car navigation systems. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has launched an investigation into the complaint.
If the investigation concludes that Toshiba has infringed upon patent rights, the ITC may ban the infringing products, or products containing infringing components, from being imported to the US, Macronix said in a statement in April.
In terms of the number of patents for 3D stacked memory technology, Macronix ranks No. 4 worldwide with 95, while Toshiba has 44 patents, Macronix said, citing an analysis by LexInnova in 2015.
Hon Hai reached out to Macronix mainly due to the memorychip maker’s patents and its ongoing lawsuit against Toshiba, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources that are familiar with Gou’s meetings with Wu.
Hon Hai and Macronix yesterday declined to comment.
Gou on Saturday told during an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review that Hon Hai will drop its bid for Toshiba Memory after six months if Toshiba continues to exclude Hon Hai.
“I would no longer want to acquire [Toshiba’s memory unit] after six months, because by then its technology will be falling behind the others,” Gou said.
Macronix shares yesterday surged by 4.79 percent to NT$17.5 at the beginning of the trading session. The stock closed at NT$16.8, up 0.6 percent from the previous trading session.
Hon Hai’s stock price fell 0.43 percent to close at NT$116.5, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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