■ Free trade
Seoul, EFTA to hold talks
South Korea and a bloc of four European countries have reached a tentative agreement to launch talks early next year on a bilateral free trade agreement, the foreign ministry here said yesterday. South Korea plans to hold the talks with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a free trade bloc made up of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The association was launched in 1960. South Korean officials said a free trade agreement with the group would increase South Korean exports to that region by 26 percent annually and imports by 27 percent. South Korea signed its first free trade agreement with Chile last year. It is seeking to conclude similar agreement with Singapore and Japan.
■ Beverages
Soft drink labels revised
No more having to do the math to figure out exactly how many calories and carbs are in that 590ml bottle of soda. New nutritional information on labels of Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other popular soft drinks will soon break it down for you. Coca-Cola Co's North America division and PepsiCo Inc's Pepsi-Cola division made separate announcements on Friday that, starting next year, they will roll out new labels on bottles that will show nutritional information for the entire container as well as the traditional 236ml serving. The new labels will appear on all of the two soft drink giants' products. The move meets a recommendation from the US Food and Drug Administration for food and beverage companies to revise labeling for packages that can be consumed at one time, such as a 590ml bottle of Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Nutritional labels include information on calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, sugars and protein. Currently, in accordance with FDA regulations, Coca-Cola and Pepsi's labels carry nutrition information for a 236ml serving and indicate the total number of servings per package.
■ Electronics
Samsung earnings fall
The electronics maker Samsung Electronics said its profit rose 46 percent from the comparable period a year earlier on a 27 percent increase in sales, but its shares came under pressure because of falling prices for electronics components. Samsung said it earned 2.69 trillion won (US$2.37 billion) on sales of 14.34 trillion won in the period, but both figures were down from its results in the second quarter. Its share price fell 1.6 percent.
■ Telecoms
Sprint planning layoffs
The Sprint Corp said on Friday that it planned to lay off 700 sales representatives and write down the value of its long-distance network to reflect more accurately the erosion in the market for traditional phone services. The job cuts will affect workers who sell phone and data services to companies and come on top of the elimination of 7,500 positions this year. The company said that its focus on selling bundles of services rather than individual products had reduced the need for sales workers. The jobs will be entirely eliminated by July next year and will leave Sprint's business solutions division with 8,300 workers, or 7.7 percent fewer than now. Sprint employs a total of 60,000 workers. Sprint also said it would reduce the value of its long-distance network, a step that its larger rival, AT&T, took earlier this month. Sprint will announce the size of that reduction when it releases third-quarter earnings figures on Tuesday. AT&T said it would write off US$11.4 billion in assets.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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