General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit are likely to have their worst US sales year since 1992, forcing production cutbacks at factories in the next 12 months, analysts said.
The companies together will sell as few as 10.3 million North American-built vehicles this year, the lowest since 9.5 million nine years ago, CSM Worldwide estimated.
"They've had disruption after disruption" this year, said Michael Robinet, a CSM consultant. "There's a high amount of Bromo Seltzer being sold in the Detroit area."
US industrywide sales will decline 6.4 percent to 16.2 million light vehicles this year as the economy slows and attacks in New York and Washington reduce consumer confidence, forecaster DRI-WEFA estimated. While that's the third-best year ever, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler losing ground as rivals such as Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co gain market share.
DaimlerChrysler abandoned its earnings forecast for 2001, citing the decline in US auto demand following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. US consumer confidence in September dropped to the lowest level since January 1996, the Conference Board said this week.
CSM's forecast was based on North American-built vehicles.
Adding in the US sales of foreign subsidiaries Volvo, Land Rover and Jaguar with Ford and Saab with General Motors boosts the total by about 480,000 cars and trucks, and still would mark the worst combined sales for the three automakers in eight years.
North American industrywide production will decline 9.7 percent to 15.5 million from last year because of lower demand, DRI-WEFA estimates.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained