■ Foreign exchange reserves fall
Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves totaled US$256.98 billion at the end of last month, down from a figure of US$257.30 billion at the end of January, the nation's central bank said yesterday. While there was a net inflow of foreign capital last month, domestic investors sent capital out of Taiwan surpassing the foreign capital net inflow, the bank said. ■ Taiwan investment in PRC up
Taiwan has approved a total of US$411.62 million worth of China-bound investment applications this year, including six mainland-bound investment applications valued US$96.01 million that it approved on Thursday, according to the Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The commission said it gave the greenlight to US$322.88 million worth of nine inbound investment applications as of Thursday, among them US$255.44 million were approved in the first two months, a 2.4 percent rise from a year earlier.
■ Cellphone prospects look good
Taiwan's cellphone output is anticipated to grow by 100 percent this year due to booming global demand, according to a report by the Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心). This year, Taiwan's cellphone output is expected to hit 153 million units, up 99.7 percent from last year. Taiwan's cellphones' world market share will reach 18 percent, up from 10 percent last year, MIC said.
■ NT dollar falls
The NT dollar fell NT$0.091 against the US dollar yesterday, to close at NT$32.401 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$1.12 billion.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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