Customs Press Apple of Asia and Alibaba Challenges Deepseek seems to be

May 7, 2025

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Hello everyone! This is Lauly who sends greetings from Taipei.

Usually the people in Taiwan enjoy a four-day holiday children's day and grave sweyeping day (a little bit of strange combination, I do know). But this 12 months, because of Donald Trump's “mutual” tariff, this 12 months was different for individuals who were involved within the technology and media industry. An industry friend jokingly said that the US President transformed his vacation right into a real “day with grave swinging”.

Personally, the primary two weeks after Trump's announcement were a nightmare after I chased sources concerning the supply chain after her reactions, tried to grasp what was occurring, after which took care of my son, who was sick on a regular basis.

I used to be particularly stunned after I came upon that a shovel, my colleague and I had moved within the night earlier, almost useless the subsequent morning after Trump had suddenly said that each country would have a time with 90 days on the brand new tariffs. We had to begin from the front, return to sources and revised the story. I shared my feelings with an extended -time industry friend and he said: “Now you already know how we’ve felt day-after-day since April 2.”

Almost everyone I recently met had large dark circles under their eyes. Paul Peng, chairman of the leading Taiwanese exhibition manufacturers Auo, said: “People asked what we should always do. I only have two advice: eat well and sleep well.” I believe such a quiet attitude can be what I needed.

After working feverishly for 3 weeks, including weekends, I left the whole lot behind and last week made a spontaneous short trip with my family to Sun Moon Lake within the central -Taiwanese city of Nantou. It was the most effective decision I made recently. The weather was perfect and the turquoise lake, which was within the direction of Misty, forested mountains and exuded calm. Sun Moon Lake at all times has the magical ability to loosen up her muscles immediately, make your breath deeper and calm her mind. If you ever come to Taiwan, I like to recommend a visit to Sun Moon Lake.

The short travel-like included a beautiful night-firefly tour, which my son absolutely loved charging my energy and reset my exhausted brain. The tariff war was just as chaotic after I returned to work this week, but I actually have the sensation that I actually have more ability to take care of the uncertainties.

And in spite of everything, doesn't take anything endlessly. A senior worker at an Apple supplier who has been working within the industry for greater than 40 years told me that he thinks the tariff war will de-escalate in two or three months, after which the provision chain must have a clearer picture of what to do next. “And let's see,” he added, “whether the tariff war will make America great again or” make America great “.”

In other messages, #Techasia will take a break in Japan next week as a result of the Golden Week Holiday. We will probably be our regular schedule again on May fifteenth. Then see you!

Opposite result

What was Apple's first answer when the Trump administration escalated the tariffs to Chinese imports of as much as 145 percent? Instead of hurrying to bring production home, it’s Doubles in Southeast Asia and India. The immediate strategy of the Tech giant based in Cupertino to take care of the tariff war Lauly Li And Cheng Ting-Fang.

Apple helped the supplier to purchase devices to extend production should be manufactured in India and VietnamAnd stormed more component production to Thailand, as Nikkei Asia reported for the primary time in mid -April.

However, the fact is that even Southeast Asia and India-WO Apple and other electronics manufacturers have had a tough time diversifying for years

The relocation of a whole supply chain is incredibly difficult. For example, while some MacBooks, Mac Mini and that iMacs are actually known as “Made in Vietnam” or “Made in Thailand”, not all components have been produced or all meetings carried on the market as a result of the dearth of sufficient technicians, specialists, while some components with low margins aren’t yet sufficiently handled from China.

Cluster effect

The Chinese Tech -Riese Huawei is making progress available on the market for artificial intelligence chip market after starting the deliveries of its advanced AI cluster to domestic customers, writes the Financial Times' Zijing Wu.

The step comes, since Chinese corporations are exposed to Nvidia's high-end-haliters with increasing restrictions on access to Nvidia's high-end, since US export controls have been tightened.

Sources show that Huawei has already sold over 10 sets of his CloudMatrix 384, a system that connects a substantial variety of AI chips. These first deliveries are intended for data centers that serve various Chinese technology corporations.

Industry analysts were impressed by the fast development and provision of CloudMatrix by Huawei.

“The development of Huawei Cloudmatrix 384 implies that China now has a AI system that may surpass the Nvidia -Nvidia,” said Dylan Patel, founding father of the Semianalysis of Chip Consultancy.

Huawei has informed the shopper that his cloud matrix in relation to computing power and memory, which was checked by the Financial Times and employees with knowledge of the matter, achieved significantly higher than Nvidia's popular NVL72 cluster by way of computing power and memory.

CloudMatrix 384 has several disadvantages, including higher energy consumption and more demanding software maintenance. In view of the abundant electricity resources and the technical talent of China, nonetheless, it continues to be a convincing alternative for purchasers who are actually limited to essentially the most advanced technology of NVIDIA, said individuals with knowledge of sales.

You have optimism

Unimicron, Taiwan's leading provider of chip substrate and printed conductor boards, expects a powerful demand from high-end-to-do-itcal centers to a powerful demand push ahead with higher growth – If the tariff war between the USA and China doesn’t escalate, Nikkei is Asia's Cheng Ting-Fang And Lauly Li write.

“So far we’ve not seen any customers who adapt their orders as a result of the tariffs, but overall we’ve concerns that higher tariffs or escalating geopolitical tensions could include global demand and eventually directly or not directly on the orders,” said the chairman of the corporate TJ Tseng.

Unimicron, which counts Nvidia, Intel and Apple amongst its customers, is currently constructing its first production facility in Thailand to enter production within the second half of this 12 months.

Tseng said his company was considering investing within the United States in response to the newest geopolitical developments within the United States, but currently has no concrete plans to do that, since a supply chain and a customer query were missing to support such a step.

Alibabas deep riot

The AI model race in China is getting hotter. The e-commerce giant Alibaba published QWen3, the newest generation of its open source family with great language to supply Request Deepseek Nikkei writes Asia's in the talents and efficiency of artificial intelligence Cissy Zhou.

Alibaba said QWen3 significantly reduces computing power in comparison with his colleagues and that his flagship qwen3-235b-A22B exceeds a variety of models published by large rival-named DEEK-R1, Openai-O1, Grok-3 and Gemini-2.Pro-in an area of benzmark tests. This includes mathematical considering, skills and functions for tools and functions, a measure of the flexibility of a model to pick and use the most effective external tools for a task.

The highly expected publication, which, in accordance with local media, has worked for about seven months, is the competition between Chinese AI corporations, especially since Deepseek appeared at first of this 12 months. Last week, Baidu released two recent AI foundation models that claimed that they cost a fraction of comparable offers from Deepseek.