Samsung Electronics Co, the first company scheduled to sell high-definition DVD players based on Sony Corp's technology, delayed the introduction of its Blu-ray machine, widening Toshiba Corp's head start in home entertainment's biggest format war in two decades.
Samsung postponed the debut of the player in the US by a month until June, said Ken Noh, a spokesman for the South Korea-based company, confirming a Reuters report. Noh said he couldn't immediately verify other details of the report, which said the player's debut was delayed until June 25 from May 23 because the product needs further testing.
The delay is the latest setback for Sony, which pushed back the introduction of its PlayStation 3 game console because of Blu-ray, in its bid to avoid losing the battle to set the standard format for home entertainment, as it did with Betamax against Video Home System tapes during the 1980s.
Toshiba, which is promoting the rival HD DVD format, began selling players based on its technology last week in Japan and plans to introduce it in the US this month. The company has the support of Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, and Intel Corp, the biggest chipmaker.
LG Electronics Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co are among companies that back both Toshiba and Sony. Samsung supports Sony.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts