ECONOMY
Gini coefficient falls
Taiwan’s Gini coefficient, a measure used to reflect income inequality, fell to 0.336 when based on household income last year, the lowest it has been since 2000, according to statistics the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics released on Friday last week. The coefficient ranges between 0 (complete equality) and 1 (complete inequality). Total household disposable income in the nation was NT$9.79 trillion (US$326.7 billion) last year, up 3 percent from the previous year, the data showed. Average disposable income was NT$942,000 per household and NT$294,000 per person, data showed.
TELECOMS
Chinese phones dominating
Shipments of Chinese smartphone brands will likely replace those of Samsung Electronics Co to dominate the Chinese market in the latter half of this year, DisplaySearch said on Friday. Chinese brands’ better integration of the supply chain and more low-profit business models have made them more competitive than the South Korean brand, the researcher said. High-end, low-budget brands have become the mainstream in China, a trend that Samsung and Apple Inc should be alert to, DisplaySearch said, adding that Samsung faces similar challenges in India.
AUTOMAKERS
Lexus tops in top sedans
Toyota Motor Corp’s Lexus took first place this year in customer satisfaction in Taiwan ahead of German brands Mercedes-Benz and BMW, according to an annual survey by market research firm JD Power on Thursday. Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the sales agent for Toyota, last week said it had raised its forecast for Lexus shipments for this year by 20 percent to 13,000 units.
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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