■ Communication
DoCoMo withdraws bid
Japan's top cellphone carrier NTT DoCoMo has decided to withdraw from bidding for AT and T Wireless because of its hefty price tag, reports said yesterday. NTT DoCoMo made the decision at an extraordinary board meeting late Friday, Japanese dailies and news agencies said. AT and T Wireless, the third-biggest US cellphone operator which is currently controlled 16 percent by NTT DoCoMo, is on sale with a bidding deadline set for Friday, Kyodo News said. Potential buyers include Cingular Wireless LLC of the US and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available.
■ Automobiles
Mitsubishi expects loss
Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp is expected to post a group operating loss of US$948 million for the year to March due to poor sales in North America, a daily said yesterday. The company reported an operating profit of US$910 million a year earlier and had estimated a loss of US$450 million for the current fiscal year, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. Its sales were hit by intense competition in North America, the business daily said. Mitsubishi Motors is showing some signs of recovery in the US market with last month's release of the new Galant sedan, but it was forced to offer deals for the older Galant models in stock.
■ Stockmarket
Chinese shares close lower
Chinese shares closed 0.32 percent lower on Friday as investors took profits on special treatment (ST) stocks following recent sharp gains, dealers said. Of the 119 special treatment stocks listed on the China A-shares markets, 105 were hit sharply, with most of them down or near their daily limits of 5 percent. The Shanghai A-share Index closed down 5.53 points at 1,738.08 on turnover of 18.42 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion dollars) and the Shenzhen A-share Index lost 4.81 points to 450.89 on 11.07 billion yuan. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A and B-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, closed down 5.29 points at 1,658.54 on turnover of 18.58.
■ Space
China reveals space budget
China has announced lift-off for the first phase of its lunar probe program, revealing what appears to be a shoestring budget for its plans to send an unmanned satellite to the moon. Funding for the project, which is to result in the satellite orbiting the moon in three years' time, has so far been set at a modest US$170 million, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday. This compares with the US space shuttle program which guzzles more than US$3 billion in a single year. China's lunar ambitions are divided into three stages, beginning with the satellite in 2007, followed by an unmanned vehicle landing on the moon in 2010, and another unmanned craft collecting lunar dust in 2020.
■ Forex
Currency swap framework
Japan will propose a new currency swap framework with its Asian neighbor countries to avert a financial meltdown in the region, a daily said yesterday. Japan plans to make the proposal in May, when finance ministers of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as China and South Korea meet, the Asahi Shimbun said. Under the system, tens of billions of dollars would be swapped to prop up the currencies of China, South Korea and ASEAN nations when they appear on the verge of plummeting, they said. The framework will complement the 2002 Chiangmai Initiative in which ASEAN, Japan, China and South Korea agreed to form a network to support each other in case of a financial crisis in the region.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six