The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday said it will conduct research to assess whether two of the nation's computer-memory chip makers are involved in price fixing practices as a US class action lawsuit has alleged.
"There have been market rumors [about them driving up prices of computer memory] but the commission cannot jump to a conclusion right away unless concrete evidence is present," said FTC Chairwoman Chou Ya-shu (
She said the commission will be closely watching developments.
In a press release yesterday, the commission said 34 states in the US have indicated that they plan to file a class action lawsuit against a group of seven international manufacturers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.
The top five firms facing the lawsuits are Samsung Electronics Co and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, both based in South Korea, the US' Micron Technology Inc, Germany's Infineon AG and Tokyo-based Elpida Memory Inc, which in total control around 80 percent of the world market, the statement said.
The other two companies are Taiwanese firms -- Nanya Technology Corp (
"Compared with their international peers, Nanya and Mosel Vitelic are just price takers and their influence on the DRAM price should be limited," the commission said.
None of the DRAM firms implicated in the class action have ever faced actions from local buyers under the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法), according to the commission. But the commission said it will keep a close eye on the market situation to troubleshoot any irregularities.
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
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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