News

According to data released by Emarketer on Wednesday (4th), driven by the rapid popularization of technology and more accurate user positioning, the US's AI-driven search advertising spending is expected to grow significantly from just over $1 billion this year to nearly $26 billion by 2029.

Arm senior vice president Chris Bergey pointed out that AI inference will be the core of Arm's future layout. At the same time, the rapid expansion of inference in terminals and data centers will drive the widespread adoption of Arm architecture IP. As the focus of AI computing shifts from training to inference, Bergey said that whether it is CPU, GPU or NPU, their respective positioning and value are being reorganized.

The strong demand for AI servers and semiconductors, coupled with concerns about Trump's tariffs and customers shipping in advance, has driven Taiwan's major IT factories to continue to see a sharp increase in revenue in April, with monthly revenue exceeding NT$1 trillion for 14 consecutive months, setting the fourth highest record in history.

The Taiwan stock market has recovered the lost ground on Trump's defense line. PCB pioneer stocks have risen steadily, playing a role in stabilizing the morale of the troops. KGI Securities pointed out that Tripod (3044)'s first quarter financial report performance exceeded expectations, and demand in the second half of the year is cautious, maintaining a "buy" investment rating; Uni-President Securities is optimistic about Huatong (2313) Satellite's financial gains, consumer market share increased, and optimistic about the future market.

The US-China trade war has been raging since 2018, and the semiconductor industry has become the core of the two powers' struggle. After Trump returned to the White House in January, he used various policies such as tariffs to encourage technology giants such as TSMC to expand their investments in the United States. The US "re-industrialization" policy is gradually disintegrating the global division of labor established by the United States itself over the past decades, and has also increased the challenges of restructuring Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain, which has been developing for half a century.

Although lithium batteries are named after lithium, many batteries still use a relatively large amount of cobalt, so some people jokingly say that this type of lithium battery should be renamed cobalt battery. However, recently, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a major cobalt producer, has issued an export ban because the price of cobalt is too low and the Democratic Republic of Congo is unwilling to sell assets at a low price; nickel, another commonly used metal material for lithium batteries, has been in oversupply for two consecutive years from 2023 to 2024, and will continue to be in oversupply this year. Lithium batteries are not popular, so how can cobalt and nickel be in excess?