AUSTRALIA
Housing market takes a dive
The housing market last year recorded its biggest annual decline since 2008, as sharp interest rate hikes sapped buying power and put off investors. The national Home Value Index fell 5.3 percent last year, the first drop since 2018, CoreLogic Inc said in a report on Monday. Annual declines were the biggest in the bellwether market of Sydney, which slid 12.1 percent, followed by an 8.1 percent drop in Melbourne. National values last month declined 1.1 percent, the report said. Home values could fall further in the early months of this year, CoreLogic said.
TURKEY
Inflation rate slows again
The annual inflation rate slowed for a second month last month after hitting a two-decade high, official data showed yesterday. Consumer prices rose 64.3 percent from a year earlier, the state statics agency said, compared with an 84.4 percent annual increase in November. Analysts attribute the sharp slowdown to the so-called base effect. The latest reading is still higher than in any other emerging market aside from Argentina.
SRI LANKA
Austerity drive begins
The country on Monday began a fresh austerity drive, freezing government recruitment as new taxes and higher electricity prices were implemented, with authorities trying to secure a US$2.9 billion bailout from the IMF. A record 20,000 civil servants retired at the end of last month — eight times as many as usual, according to the Ministry of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government — after President Ranil Wickremesinghe reduced their retirement age from 65 to 60. They would not be replaced, the ministry said.
INDIA
Rules to curb risky gaming
Regulations have for the first time been drafted to oversee areas of online gaming that fall into a gray area between gambling and entertainment, seeking to resolve growing complaints of addiction particularly among minors. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has published proposed rules governing apps or Web sites that involve an exchange of users’ money, from online casinos and card games to fantasy sports clubs. That sets them apart from gaming titles such as Electronic Arts Inc’s FIFA Soccer, which is to be regulated by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
FRANCE
Retirement age under debate
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said a contentious overhaul of the pension system might not necessarily require raising the minimum retirement age to 65 from 62. Consultations with worker and business representatives would continue for another week before the government finalizes a plan to be debated in parliament early next month, Borne said on France Info radio. “There are other solutions that could enable us to meet our objective of balancing of our pension system by 2030,” Borne said.
RUSSIA
Ex-Soviet states buy less gas
Gas exports to countries outside a group of former Soviet republics plunged 45.5 percent annually last year, figures from gas giant Gazprom showed on Monday. Gazprom PJSC said in a statement that exports outside the Commonwealth of Independent States totaled 100.9 billion cubic meters compared with 185.1 billion in 2021. Europe was previously Gazprom’s main export market, but supplies have been drastically reduced because of sanctions following Russia’s war in Ukraine.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
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