Mitsubishi Motors Corp, which depends on Asia for half its revenue, plans to more than double vehicle sales in China to 310,000 units in the next five years, as it bets on the market to help revive the company.
Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Motors, which plans to release 44 new and revamped models in the next four years, will introduce 11 models in China in the period, it said in a press release on Friday.
The automaker had released five new and revamped models in China over the past four years, selling 151,000 units in the country during the year ended March.
Mitsubishi Motors, which reported a loss of ?215.4 billion (US$1.9 billion) in the year ended March and projected an even bigger loss this year, will cut 22 percent of its jobs, close factories, and repay debt to earn an annual profit by March 2006.
It sees China as the key to growth after sales in the country rose 66 percent in the year just ended.
"It's a good strategy for Mitsubishi Motors to focus on Asia and make the best use of what it can now," said Yasuhiro Matsumoto, a credit analyst with BNP Paribas Securities in Tokyo.
The automaker said on Friday it plans to set up 500 dealerships in the year ending March 2009 from 110 in the year ending March 2005.
Mitsubishi Motors said it will also increase stakes in its Chinese joint ventures and make and sell vehicles using its brand.
The automaker expects sales of Mitsubishi-brand vehicles to increase to 213,000 units in the year ending March 2009 from 38,000 units in the year ending March 2005, the company said in a press release.
Mitsubishi Motors's shares rose 2.6 percent to 240 yen in Tokyo on Friday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to