US lowers Motech tariff
The US Department of Commerce has cut the import tariff on Motech Industries Inc’s (茂迪) solar cells to 20.86 percent from the 44.18 percent originally proposed, the firm said in a statement submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange before the market opened.
The downward revision makes the levy on Motech the lowest among Taiwanese solar cell makers, which the US subjects to an anti-dumping tax of between 27.59 and 35.89 percent. The new rate meets the expectations Motech voiced last week.
Motech shares rallied 6.97 percent to close at NT$37.6 yesterday in Taipei trading.
SPIL to buy ProMOS factory
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密), the world’s third-largest chip packager and tester, yesterday said it has inked an agreement with ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) to buy 12-inch chip manufacturing equipment and facilities for NT$6.4 billion (US$213 million).
ProMOS said it plans to use the proceeds of the sale of its factory in Greater Taichung to fund restructuring projects.
SPIL has raised its capital spending for a second time this year to a record high of NT$18 billion to cope with ballooning customer demand.
Yahoo to expand native ads
Yahoo Inc on Monday said its Taiwanese native advertising service will likely be expanded, since the new marketing concept has attracted many brand-name customers, such as Swedish furniture retailer IKEA Group, Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Ltd and South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co, by helping them cut costs.
Native advertising aims to let publishers and advertisers deliver paid ads that are conducive to a Web page’s content, assimilated into its design and consistent with the platform’s behavior so the viewer feels the ad belongs there.
Phone shipments to grow
Worldwide shipments of smartphones are to continue growing in the third quarter of the year, spurred by the release of Chinese handsets and Apple Inc’s new iPhone later this year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Monday.
TrendForce forecast in a note that 322 million smartphones would be shipped in the third quarter, up 13 percent from the second quarter, pushing whole-year shipments to 1.2 billion units — an annual rise of 29.2 percent.
The market researcher predicted Apple would sell 75 million new 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones this year.
HTC reveals Butterfly 2
HTC Corp (宏達電) unveiled the newest smartphone in its popular Butterfly series in Tokyo yesterday, saying the device is to go on sale in Taiwan and other Asian markets next month.
The HTC Butterfly 2 is to be available in Taiwan on Sept. 2 through Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), as well as through major wireless carriers and retailers across Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, HTC said in a statement.
It did not reveal the phone’s expected retail price.
FAT adds service to Meixian
Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) on Monday launched a regular non-stop route between Greater Taichung and Meixian in southeast China that will operate every Monday.
Starting on Sept. 22, the airline will also offer a service between Greater Taichung and Hefei, also in eastern China, that will likewise operate on Mondays.
In the first six months of the year, Taichung Airport handled 1.05 million travelers, compared with 806,000 in the same period last year, government statistics show.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
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