Mitsubishi Motors Corp, which has been seeking partnerships to bail itself out of its deep financial woes, will supply minicars to Nissan Motor Co, both sides said yesterday. Mitsubishi Motors will supply 36,000 minicars a year to Nissan starting in the first half of fiscal 2005, which begins April 1.
Both Nissan and Mitsubishi had said they were talking about a possible tie-up, and the agreement was not a major surprise.
Nissan, which does not make its own minicars, now gets minicars from Suzuki Motor Corp, a Japanese automaker that specializes in minicars, under an OEM agreement.
The purchase by Nissan is part of the company's expansion to bolster its market share. Mini vehicles, with engines smaller than a 0.66-liter capacity, are the only type of automobiles that increased sales in Japan last year.
Nissan saves time and cuts development costs by buying an existing model from Mitsubishi, a move that's estimated to add ?1 billion (US$9.8 million) of extra operating profit to the carmaker, according to an estimate by Credit Suisse First Boston's analyst Koji Endo.
Mitsubishi boosts its operating profit by ?4.5 billion (US$44 million) after selling the models to Nissan, Endo said.
"For Mitsubishi Motors, it is still one step forward" even if the financial contribution from this transaction is "limited" for both parties, Endo said.
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],”
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
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