The Japanese government would begin preparing a bill to expand financial aid aimed at increasing local production of semiconductors by domestic and foreign companies, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to submit the bill to an ordinary Diet session this year, the daily reported, citing people it did not identify who belong to the administration and ruling party.
Global chip shortages in industries ranging from automotive to entertainment have slowed growth in the world economy as it attempts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) said earlier this month that it would build a chip factory in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, with a subsidiary of Sony Group Corp becoming a minority shareholder in the venture.
The bill would also strengthen the government’s ability to check the country of origin of any computer equipment it purchases, with a goal to block China-made computer devices before they were installed in a national security capacity, the Yomiuri reported.
Separately, Samsung Electronics Co vice chairman Jay Y. Lee yesterday left for Canada and the US in his first overseas business trip since his parole in August, Yonhap News agency reported.
Samsung’s de facto chief told reporters at an airport that he would meet with “various partners” in the US, Yonhap said.
While it is unclear what Lee would do in his first business travel to the country in five years, he could visit Samsung’s chip plant site in Austin, Texas, amid the shortage of semiconductors and might finalize the selection of the site for the firm’s new US chip plant, according to the report.
Lee is also to visit Boston, where Moderna Inc’s headquarters are located. Samsung Biologics Co makes the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by