More than five Taiwanese companies with overseas operations have submitted applications to lease land in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) to move production lines back home in an effort to fend off downside risks from a US-China trade war, the Central Taiwan Science Park Administration said yesterday.
More than 40 companies attended a forum arranged by the agency to address tax incentives and new tax rules, indicating that a growing number of local manufacturers are showing strong interest in making homebound investments amid uncertainty over US-China trade tensions.
The agency declined to disclose names of the companies seeking homebound investments, but said that the nation’s major smart machinery makers and bicycle parts suppliers are on the list.
“We are taking proactive measures to squeeze out more land to cope with new land requests,” Central Taiwan Science Park Director-General Chen Ming-huang (陳銘煌) told reporters.
The agency said it plans to offer land in a newly developed campus in Changhua County’s Erlin Township (二林), as most areas of the park are at capacity.
The 631-hectare campus has attracted 20 businesses — including Global Tek Fabrication Co (時碩) and China Fineblanking Technology Co (和勤精機) — which are ready to outlay a total of NT$60 billion (US$1.94 billion), it said.
“The Erlin campus will be a good option for Taiwanese companies with homebound investment intentions,” Chen said.
However, potential investors prefer leasing land in Taichung’s Houli District (后里), which is closer to the heart of the Central Taiwan Science Park and Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) in the north, he said.
Houli District is fully occupied and only one plot of land leased to panelmaker AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) is idle, the agency said, adding that it is in talks with AUO to release the land if it has no expansion plans.
Another possible availability would be from solar company Xantia Corp (桑緹亞), which earlier this year filed for bankruptcy protection and is to hold a new round of bankruptcy auctions to sell factories on a 4.2-hectare plot of land in the district, it said.
More than 60 companies are working on return plans with various government agencies, including about 25 that are being helped by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the ministry said last week.
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