■ ELECTRONICS
Apple rolls out new models
Apple on Tuesday rolled out new iPhone and iPod Touch models with beefed-up memory and bumped-up prices. A premium iPhone with 16 gigabytes of memory and a US$499 price tag is now the top of that line, ahead of a model with half the memory and a price of US$399. An iPod Touch with 32 gigabytes of memory costs US$499, relegating the US$399 16-gigabyte model to second position. Apple sells an eight-gigabyte iPod Touch for US$299. IPod Touch models are essentially iPhones without the mobile telephone capabilities.
■ INTERNET
Google offers new filters
Google on Tuesday began marketing new online tools for protecting e-mail from spam and other problems as it continued to challenge Microsoft. Google unveiled e-mail security services built with technology from Postini, a start-up that the Internet titan bought last year for US$625 million. The software protects, filters, encrypts and archives e-mail, and is compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise. Google said subscription pricing for e-mail security starts at US$3 a year to "accommodate the budget of any business." Premium services that include virus protection and saving messages is priced at US$25 annually.
■ AVIATION
TAL parts for Boeing
Boeing Co, which is at least eight months behind schedule on delivering the 787 Dreamliner commercial jet, said it will partner with a unit of India's Tata group to build components for the aircraft. Boeing signed an agreement to partner with TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd to make floor beams for the 787, Boeing said today.
■ AEROSPACE
Bigelow looks to military
An aerospace company is negotiating to use a military rocket to ferry hardware, crew and cargo to a planned commercial space station, privately held Bigelow Aerospace said on Tuesday. Bigelow plans to build and operate an expandable commercial orbital outpost in late 2011 but needs the use of a reusable launch vehicle. The deal, if approved, would include six initial launches of an Atlas V rocket, said Mike Gold, Bigelow's corporate counsel. The rocket is made by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
■ BEVERAGES
Coke buys into Honest Tea
The Coca-Cola Co said on Tuesday that it bought a 40 percent stake in organic tea maker Honest Tea, adding to its offerings of non-cola beverages. The 40 percent stake cost roughly US$43 million, which puts the total value of Honest Tea at about US$110 million. Coca-Cola can add Honest Tea to a non-cola drinks portfolio that includes Glaceau's VitaminWater, which it purchased for US$4.1 billion in June.
■ EARNINGS
Hon Hai eyes 30% boost
Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) is estimated to boost its annual sales by 30 percent this year to NT$2.6 trillion (US$81.3 billion), despite concerns of a global economic slowdown and the US subprime crisis, the Chinese-language Commercial Times quoted group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) as saying. Gou expected Web networking, optoelectronics and wireless communications subsidiaries to grow the fastest this year, regardless of the US economic fallout, the newspaper reported. But Gou warned people not to overlook the potential impact from the US downturn, saying that growth in emerging markets like China and India would not be able to replace the loss in the US market, the paper said.
■ SOFTWARE
India delivers for SAP
SAP, the world's biggest business management software maker, said yesterday that India is now its fastest growing market as competition forces firms to use technology to cut costs. For the first time, India is among the German giant's top 10 markets, passing a "whole bunch of countries," SAP India head Ranjan Das told a news conference. The company's Indian unit had a record-breaking year last year by more than doubling its number of customers to 3,000 at the end of 2006. Overall revenue grew 68 percent, which was the fastest pace for SAP worldwide, Das said.
■ FOOD
New GM soy on the way
Monsanto Co, the world's biggest seed producer, said Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan approved imports of its first new genetically modified soybeans in more than a decade. Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean seeds increase yields by 7 percent to 11 percent compared with first-generation Roundup Ready soybean seeds that have been sold since 1996, Monsanto said today. Monsanto plans to sell the seeds for release on as many as 810,000 hectares in the US in 2009 and on 2.43 million hectares in 2010.
■ INTERNET
Music downloads for China
Google Inc, owner of the world's most-used online search engine, has held talks with Universal Music Group to provide song downloads via the Web in China, the world's second-biggest Internet market by users. EMI Group Ltd and Sony BMG Music Entertainment may join Vivendi SA's Universal in offering free digital music downloads, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing people familiar with the talks. Google would work with Beijing-based Top100.cn, which sells licensed music downloads for 1 yuan (US$0.14) a song to operate the service, the Wall Street Journal reported. The record companies would earn royalties, it said.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Daimler sales up 16%
Automaker Daimler AG said yesterday that sales of its Mercedes-Benz cars helped to increase global sales by 16 percent last month from the same time last year. The maker of Mercedes-Benz, AMG, Maybach and Smart said it sold a record 90,400 cars last month compared with 77,700 in January last year. By brand, the company said it sold 82,300 Mercedes cars last month, up 12 percent from the 73,500 sold a year earlier, led by demand for its C-Class sedan and station wagon models. Demand was strong in the US, where sales rose 7 percent to 18,300 cars. In Asia, Mercedes-Benz sales rose 19 percent to 11,700 cars. In Germany, sales were up 13 percent to 15,500 cars.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
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