EUROPEAN UNION
Inflation fight remains ‘key’
In policy recommendations to be given to member states yesterday, seen by Bloomberg News, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, was to tell national governments that “it will take time for price pressures to disappear” so “combating inflation remains a key policy priority in the coming period.” Officials reiterated that fiscal measures taken to aid consumers and businesses through the energy crisis should be phased out this year, and that they should revert to prudent policies for their public finances to ensure long-term debt sustainability. The annual recommendations to capitals around the region differ from last year’s by elevating inflation as a key challenge for governments to help tackle. A turbulent geopolitical context, the ensuing energy crisis and implementation of the EU’s unprecedented 800 billion euros (US$862 billion) recovery fund have been dominant themes since the previous report.
GERMANY
Business outlook sours
The country’s business outlook deteriorated for the first time since October last year, as a struggling manufacturing sector threatens to undermine the recovery of Europe’s biggest economy. An expectations gauge by the Ifo institute slipped to 88.6 this month from 91.7 the previous month, worse than expected by every single economist in a Bloomberg survey. A measure of current conditions also slipped. “The mood in the German economy has taken a significant hit,” Ifo president Clemens Fuest said in a statement yesterday. “The German economy is skeptical about the summer.”
TECHNOLOGY
Apple, Broadcom join forces
Apple Inc on Tuesday announced a multibillion-dollar collaboration with US tech firm Broadcom Inc to make “cutting-edge” components for wirelessly connecting to high-speed 5G telecom networks. The iPhone maker did not specify exactly how many billions of dollars it would put into the Broadcom alliance, but said it is part of a commitment to invest in the US economy. “All of Apple’s products depend on technology engineered and built here in the United States, and we’ll continue to deepen our investments in the US economy because we have an unshakable belief in America’s future,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in a statement. The alliance would include designing and manufacturing sophisticated radio frequency components and other “cutting-edge wireless connectivity” parts in the US, Apple said.
UNITED STATES
White House hosts forum
The White House hosted a forum for workers whose employers use automated systems to monitor them, and plans a broader effort to ask Americans what priorities the government should pursue regarding artificial intelligence as President Joe Biden weighs new regulations on emerging workplace technologies. The meeting with White House officials on Tuesday would feature employees from call centers, warehouses, healthcare, gig work and the trucking industry, as the administration seeks to better understand how companies deploy automated technology for worker surveillance. Companies including Amazon.com Inc and Uber Technologies Inc have come under criticism from labor groups who say technologies designed to improve performance and efficiency can push them to accept unsafe working conditions.
South Korea would avoid capitalizing on China’s ban on a US chipmaker, seeing the move by Beijing as an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, a person familiar with the situation said. The South Korean government would not encourage its memorychip firms to grab market share in China lost by Micron Technology Inc, which has been barred for use in critical industries by Beijing on national security grounds, the person said. China is the biggest market for South Korea semiconductor firms Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc and home to some of their factories. Their operations in China
GEOPOLITICAL RISKS: The company has a deep collaboration with TSMC, but it is also open to working with Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp, the world’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) GPU supplier, yesterday said that it is diversifying its supply chain partners in order to enhance supply chain resilience amid geopolitical tensions. “All of our supply chain is designed for maximum diversity and redundancy so that we can have resilience. Our company is very big and so we have a lot of customers depending on us. And so our supply chain resilience is very important to us. We manufacture in as many places as we can,” Nvidia founder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said in response to a reporter’s question in
DIVERSIFICATION: The chip designer expects new non-smartphone products to be available next year or in 2025 as it seeks new growth engines to broaden its portfolio MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it expects non-mobile phone chips, such as automotive chips, to drive its growth beyond 2025, as it pursues diversification to create a more balanced portfolio. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said it has counted on smartphone chips, power management chips and chips for other applications to fuel its growth in the past few years, but it is developing new products to continue growing. “Our future growth drivers, of course, will be outside of smartphones,” MediaTek chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu City. “As new products would be available next year
BIG MARKET: As growth in the number of devices and data traffic accelerates, it will not be possible to send everything to the cloud, a Qualcomm executive said Qualcomm Inc is betting the future of artificial intelligence (AI) will require more computing power than what the cloud alone can provide. The world’s largest maker of smartphone processors is transitioning from a communications company into an “intelligent edge computing” firm, Qualcomm senior vice president Alex Katouzian said. The edge in question is the mobile device that a user taps to access a network or service, and Katouzian used his time headlining one of the major keynote events at the Computex show in Taipei to make the case for how big a market that would be. The US company’s chips help smartphones harness
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