A plan by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, to increase wages for its employees in Taiwan in July is expected to prompt other enterprises in the local business sector to follow suit, an analyst said yesterday.
“Hon Hai Precision is a local business leader. I think its move will serve as a strong indicator to the business sector,” Mirae Asset Management analyst Arch Shih (施博元) said.
Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) said in a TV interview on Wednesday that his company is reviewing pay scales for its employees in Taiwan as the public is faced with a rising cost of living since the government removed a mechanism to partially freeze domestic fuel prices.
The government is also likely to raise electricity prices after the latest increase in fuel prices, which became effective on Monday.
Gou said he hopes the pay increases will go into effect in July after the current review is completed.
He added that employees are Hon Hai Precision’s most precious asset and that under the current circumstances the company should raise their wages.
However, he did not elaborate on the size of the salary increase for the company’s approximately 10,000 employees in Taiwan.
Local media have reported that some other high-tech heavyweights, such as notebook computer maker Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) and flat panel makers AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chimei Innolux Corp (奇美電子), might also give their employees a pay raise later this year.
The plan to raise wages did not have an adverse impact on Hon Hai shares on the local bourse, with the stock outperforming the broader market to close up 0.91 percent at NT$111.
Shih said that was because investors have been upbeat about a tie-up between Hon Hai and Japan’s Sharp Corp that was announced last month.
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.
RSS