ELECTRONICS
Compal shipments to rise
Compal Electronics Co (仁寶電腦) yesterday said its smartphone shipments for this year would double from last year to 40 million units and PC shipments would also increase from last year’s 44.5 million units, driven by the all-in-one PC segment, Chinese-language online news provider cnyes.com reported, citing Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰). Compal’s consolidated revenue totaled NT$845.8 billion (US$26.73 billion) last year, up 22 percent from 2013. Addressing the firm’s annual year’s-end banquet, or wei ya (尾牙), Chen said sales are expected to increase by a double-digit percentage from last year to reach their highest level, the Web site reported.
INVESTMENT
Taiwanese funds drop
Taiwan’s mutual funds declined by NT$118.9 billion to NT$1.97 trillion last month from the previous month, the lowest since the NT$1.92 trillion recorded in January last year, according to data released yesterday by the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (證券投信投顧公會). The decline came as investors adjusted downward high-yield bond funds related to the energy sector amid the plunge in global oil prices, according to the association. High-yield bond funds dropped by nearly 10 percent to NT$193.8 billion last month from November last year. For the whole of last year, total mutual funds increased 0.42 percent year-on-year to NT$24.5 trillion, data showed.
BANKING
Yuan remittances jump
Yuan remittances soared 44.19 percent to 319.04 billion yuan (US$51.46 billion) last month, compared with 221.27 billion yuan in November last year, due chiefly to Taiwanese firms’ cash management, central bank Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Harry Yen (顏輝煌) said on Thursday. Yuan remittances through local banks’ domestic banking units rose 77.96 billion yuan month-on-month to 197.19 billion yuan, while yuan remittances through banks’ offshore banking units reached 121.85 billion yuan, up 19.82 billion yuan from November, data showed. The sharp increase in yuan flows is healthy and favorable for the government’s aim to build Taiwan into an offshore yuan hub, Yen said.
BANKING
Ministry approves merger
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Thursday approved the merger between Citibank Taiwan (花旗台灣商業銀行) and Diners Club International (Taiwan) Ltd (台灣大來國際信用卡), with Citibank Taiwan to be the surviving entity from Feb. 1. Since both companies are directly or indirectly held by Citibank, the merger would be more like an internal organization restructuring to integrate resources for expanding business scale, the commission said. As of the end of November last year, Diners Club had about 26,000 credit cards in circulation, with cardholders to maintain their rights and benefits after the merger, the commission said.
INVESTMENT
MOEA releases figures
The Ministry of Economic Affairs on Thursday said it approved 69 Taiwanese companies’ investment proposals over the past two years, attracting a total of NT$241.1 billion and creating 39,000 job opportunities, including NT$80 billion from Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (日月光半導體) and NT$16 billion from Largan Precision Co (大立光). The Industrial Development Bureau said as of last year, more than NT$80 billion has actually been invested.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
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
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
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.
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