Victor announces TV recall
Victor Co of Japan Ltd, maker of the JVC brand of electronics, said it will recall 18,430 of its plasma televisions as some may emit smoke and catch fire.
The company will inspect and repair the televisions free of charge, Yokohama-based Victor said in a statement yesterday.
Victor shares fell 3.4 percent to ?228 (US$1.99) at the close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The benchmark Nikkei 225 declined 1.5 percent.
Filipino remittances to double
Money returned home to the Philippines by millions of Filipinos working abroad, already 10 percent of the nation's GDP, is expected to almost double to US$21.4 billion a year by 2010, officials forecast.
Alex Aguilar, spokesman for the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, said last year cash transfers rose to a record US$12.8 billion, as the government forecast an annual increase of about 10 percent.
However, officials say this figure could go much higher and Aguilar expects the rate of overseas remittances to increase by 15 percent to 20 percent annually to about US$21.4 billion by 2010 from US$10.7 billion in 2005.
He said the composition of workers leaving for overseas is shifting to professionals and other skilled higher-paid sectors, compared to maids and construction workers who dominated workers abroad 20 or 30 years ago.
Worker deployment dropped by 3.7 percent in the eight months to August, but the tilt to highly skilled workers allowed remittances to rise 15.3 percent to US$9.3 billion, he told reporters on Sunday.
Fast Retailing targets China
Fast Retailing Co, Asia's biggest clothing retailer, plans to operate 200 Uniqlo stores in China and Hong Kong within five years, with the region set to overtake Japan as the firm's largest sales generator by 2017.
About 80 percent of the stores will be in China, senior vice president Tiger Pan (潘寧) said. Fast Retailing has five stores in Hong Kong and 10 in China.
The casual clothing chain is tapping the world's fastest growing major economy as sales stall in its home market, which accounts for about 90 percent of total revenue. Fast Retailing's sales from China and Hong Kong will double every year to about 7 billion yuan (US$939 million) by 2012, Pan said.
"Sales growth in Japan is very limited as the population is shrinking," said Pan, who is also the managing director of the Uniqlo Hong Kong unit, in an interview on Friday. "The group is shifting focus to Asia, especially to China, as the booming middle class is driving up spending."
Shares dive on Wen comments
Hong Kong shares tumbled yesterday morning on disappointment over a delay in a plan to allow mainland Chinese to invest on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 3 percent, or 915.56 points, to end the morning session at 29,552.78. Turnover was heavy.
The blue-chip index has shot up 40 percent since Aug. 20, when China announced it would allow mainland Chinese to directly invest in Hong Kong's stock market, although a timetable for its introduction was never set.
On Saturday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) indicated a delay was likely, as Beijing studied the impact of the scheme on Hong Kong and the mainland markets and created a law to regulate the amount of money flowing out of the mainland.
US dollar gains ground
The US dollar gained ground against the New Taiwan dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, increasing NT$0.015 to close at NT$32.405.
A total of US$1.01 billion changed hands yesterday.
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],”