TECHNOLOGY
Microsoft updates provisions
Microsoft Corp yesterday said it was updating the privacy provisions of its commercial cloud contracts after European regulators found its deals with EU institutions failed to protect data in line with EU law. The European Data Protection Supervisor in April opened an investigation to assess whether Microsoft’s contracts with the European Commission and other EU institutions met data protection rules. It last month raised concerns about compliance. “We will increase our data protection responsibilities for a subset of processing that Microsoft engages in when we provide enterprise services,” Microsoft said in a statement.
AVIATION
Boeing to make MAX sale
Boeing Co is in talks to sell 737 MAX aircraft to Indian carrier SpiceJet Ltd, according to a person familiar with the matter, in what would be a Dubai Airshow coup for the grounded narrow-body plane. The discussions are ongoing and the size of the order has not been determined, the person said. While the talks could still fall apart, a deal might be announced as soon as this week in Dubai, the person said. The MAX, a global workhorse on shorter routes, has been idled since March in the wake of two deadly crashes.
HONG KONG
Home sales plummet
Home sales plunged over the weekend as increasingly violent protests shut down parts of the territory. A boost to property sales last month from the relaxation of mortgage rules has proven short-lived as the protests escalated. The number of transactions in 15 housing estates tracked by Midland Realty International Ltd (美聯物業) slumped 78 percent over the weekend from a month earlier. “The unpredictable social events have intensified in the past few days, affecting apartment visits for potential buyers,” Midland residential department chief executive officer Sammy Po (布少明) said. “Buyers have turned more cautious,” he said.
JAPAN
Electronic money catches on
Almost one-fifth of households use electronic money for small purchases, a survey by a central bank-affiliated research institute showed, up from a year earlier and a sign that the country’s cash-hoarding culture is changing. In the survey published yesterday and conducted during June and July, 18.5 percent of households said they used electronic money, such as smartphone apps and debit card payments, on shopping trips where ¥1,000 (US$9.18) or less is spent, up from 15.4 percent the previous year. Among single-person households — 43 percent of whom are in their 20s and 30s — the ratio was much higher at 35.6 percent.
MACROECONOMY
Global recovery expected
A combination of easing trade tensions and easier monetary policy is expected lift global growth from the first quarter of next year, according to economists at Morgan Stanley. Emerging markets would drive the recovery, given the late-cycle stage that US growth is in, they said. “A 1Q20 recovery is on the cards,” the US bank’s economists led by Chetan Ahya wrote in a note. “Global growth should recover from 1Q20, reversing the downtrend of the past seven quarters as trade tensions and monetary policy are easing simultaneously for the first time since the downtrend began.” Risks remain skewed to the downside, including the potential for more tariffs, the corporate credit risk and uncertainty around the US elections, the note said.
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