EMPLOYMENT
Hiring outlook weakens
The hiring outlook for the fourth quarter of the year weakened amid rising uncertainty over the economy at a time of escalating trade friction between the US and China, a survey released by online 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) on Wednesday last week showed. According to the survey, which was conducted from Aug. 23 to Tuesday last week and collected 838 valid questionnaires, 54.89 percent of the responding enterprises said they planned to launch recruitment campaigns in the fourth quarter, down 2.61 percent from a year earlier.
INTERNET
Industrial platform planned
Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd (FII, 富士康工業互聯網) on Tuesday last week said it would work with NXP Semiconductors Ltd of the Netherlands on the development of an industrial Internet system. NXP has agreed to provide artificial intelligence technology and solutions to help FII set up an advanced industrial Internet platform, FII said. The companies would work together to build an industrial Internet ecosystem to help FII clients achieve smart production and management, it said.
APPAREL
Jacket supplier hits record
Leading down jacket supplier Quang Viet Enterprise Co (廣越) yesterday posted record-high sales of NT$2.2 billion (US$71.48 million) for last month, a 25.43 percent year-on-year increase from NT$1.76 billion thanks to peak season effects. The increase brought the company’s cumulative revenue in the first eight months to NT$8.01 billion, up 42.82 percent from NT$5.61 billion the previous year, it said in a statement, adding that orders have surged from major customers such as Adidas AG, Patagonia, Nike Inc, The North Face and Puma AG.
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.
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