■ MOBILE PHONES
Global use to hit 50%
The number of mobile phone users will pass the number of non-users this year for the first time, the UN's telecoms agency said. Ownership rates in developing countries are rising fastest, with Brazil, Russia, India and China totaling 1 billion subscribers last year, the International Telecommunication Union said. In 2000, only 12 percent of the global population had a mobile phone. "At current growth rates, global mobile penetration is expected to reach 50 percent by early 2008," according to ITU's newsletter for last month. This would amount to more than 3.3 billion subscriptions worldwide.
■ ELECTRONICS
Fitch upgrades Sony
Fitch Ratings late on Wednesday upgraded Sony Corp, judging that the company's video games and core electronics businesses were finally getting back on track. Fitch gave Sony a long-term debt rating of "A-", the seventh out of 22 levels, moving it up a category from the earlier "BBB+". The outlook was stable. Fitch noted that Sony had gained the upper hand in promoting its Blu-ray as the standard for next-generation DVDs in its showdown with Toshiba Corp's rival HD-DVD. But Sony could face trouble from a weakening US economy and an expected rise in the yen, which would make its products less competitive outside Japan, Fitch said.
■ INTERNET
Google allows joint access
Google Inc upgraded its software to let groups of people work on the same document online, in an effort to push deeper into a market dominated by Microsoft Corp. The Google Apps team edition allows users of the Web-based word-processing and spreadsheet software to invite others to view and edit documents. The files can be opened from a computer or mobile phone, Google said today in a statement. The company is positioning the software to compete with Microsoft's Office products as part of a bid to expand beyond Internet advertising sales. The programs let users store their information online rather than keeping files on personal computers.
■ BANKING
Deutsche Bank nets record
The biggest German bank, Deutsche Bank, yesterday posted a record net profit of 6.5 billion euros (US$9.5 billion) for last year and said it had no net write-downs related to the US subprime mortgage debacle. The result marked an increase of 7 percent from the figure in 2006, Deutsche Bank said in a statement. It quoted chairman Josef Ackermann as saying that in the fourth quarter of last year, "we had no net write-downs related to sub-prime, CDO [collateralized debt obligation] or RMBS [residential mortgage-backed security] exposures." In the third quarter, Deutsche Bank had marked down 2.2 billion euros to cover losses linked to the crisis and posted a loss of 837 million euros in trading income.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last