Engineering and electronics giant Siemens is facing heavy criticism in Germany amid accusations it let its mobile phone division die while handing hefty pay rises to top managers.
BenQ Corp (明基), the Taiwanese group which acquired the Siemens mobile phone subsidiary last year, said last Thursday it was pulling the plug because of deepening losses, plunging 3,000 jobs into jeopardy.
That came just days after Siemens announced it was awarding 30 percent pay rises to its top managers.
"Under the leadership of Klaus Kleinfeld, the giant is lurching," the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Friday of the 48-year-old who took over the reins at Siemens last year.
Over the past two weeks, unions and politicians have hardly had a good word to say about one of Germany's industrial jewels.
Even the conservative leader of the powerful state of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, stepped into the row, describing the pay hikes at the Munich-based firm as "extremely regrettable."
Heinrich von Pierer, Siemens' supervisory board chairman, tried to justify the move with a reference to a top soccer team.
"At Siemens, we are playing in the Champions League, not in the Bavarian local league. And like Bayern Munich, we will only attract the top staff if we pay the right sort of money," he said.
It was not an argument that went down well with workers.
In the telecommunications division Com, 1,000 people are about to lose their jobs, hot on the heels of the 1,500 cut last year.
Another 5,400 jobs are set to be slashed in the SBS information technology subsidiary, including 2,400 in Germany.
Rumors are flying that either one or both units might close.
Against this tense backdrop, BenQ's decision to shut down its mobile phone manufacturing in Germany inflicted further harm to Siemens' image.
Siemens offloaded the mobile phone operations to BenQ last year, even paying to have it taken off its hands, observers recalled on Friday.
Unions have told BenQ Mobile's employees in Munich and sites in western Germany to vent their anger at Siemens.
The general opinion is that Siemens raised unrealistic expectations that the loss-making unit could be saved and then left someone else to do the dirty work.
also see story:
Editorial: BenQ's failure a cautionary tale
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
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],”