JAPAN
Seoul talks announced
Minister of Trade and Industry Isshu Sugawara yesterday said that Tokyo would hold talks with Seoul over the nation’s move to tighten export controls to South Korea, agreeing to Seoul’s request for consultations as part of a dispute settlement through the WTO. “We will make arrangements through diplomatic channels,” Sugawara told a news conference. Separately, Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi told a briefing that there was no immediate plan for him to meet with his South Korean counterpart. Earlier this week, South Korea initiated a WTO dispute against the export curbs, which include three materials used in smartphone chips and displays.
ENERGY
Offshore wind plan unveiled
SSE PLC and Equinor ASA are to build the world’s biggest offshore wind park after winning capacity in a UK auction where prices fell so low that costs are now on par with traditional power plants. The projects are to deliver power at a set price of £39.65 (US$49.80) per megawatt-hour, 31 percent below the level in a similar auction in 2017. The price drop brings the technology in close competition with electricity produced from fossil fuels. It also means that, for the first time, offshore wind farms might not even need to be propped up by government support.
ELECTRONICS
Huawei launches Mate 30
Huawei yesterday launched a new flagship smartphone, but it comes without popular Google apps such as Chrome or YouTube after US sanctions began, limiting its appeal. The Chinese tech giant’s Mate 30 series, including one for new 5G networks, runs on an open-source version of Google’s Android operating system, which by default does not come preinstalled with the US company’s suite of popular apps and services that licensed versions to have. It also does not come with the Google Play Store, the main way users outside China access Android apps. Huawei’s chief executive officer of consumer business Richard Yu (余承東) told reporters after the launch that consumers “can download [the apps] by themselves” from third-party sites. “For us, we can’t really install the apps.”
DELIVERIES
Virginia to get drone trial
Drone deliveries are coming soon, at least for one Virginia community, as part of a pilot project announced on Thursday by Wing, the unit spun out of a “moonshot” lab at Google parent Alphabet. Joining the pilot project is delivery giant FedEx, retail and pharmacy outlet Walgreens and local ice cream and gifts retailer Sugar Magnolia. The drone service to launch next month in Christiansburg, Virginia, will be the most advanced real-world test of the technology to quickly fly items ranging from Gummy Bears to painkillers, Wing chief executive officer James Burgess said. “By delivering small packages directly to homes through the air in minutes and making a wide range of medicine, food and other products available to customers, we will demonstrate what we expect safer, faster, cleaner local delivery to look like in the future,” Burgess said.
METALS
PPC eyes improved 2020
Pan Pacific Copper (PPC), Japan’s top copper smelter, said that it expects the global consumption and supply of refined copper would climb by 1.5 percent and 1.7 percent respectively next year compared with this year, PPC general manager for marketing Naoki Kojima told reporters yesterday.
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