Sony Corp unveiled its latest 13.3-inch VAIO SR and 16.4-inch wide screen FW series equipped with Intel’s Centrino 2 processors yesterday for the five-day 2008 Taipei Computer Application Show beginning today.
The VAIO SR series aims to attract urban office workers with its modern design, while the VAIO FW series targets home users, with features such as a Clear Bright high color liquid crystal display (LCD) screen and a Blu-ray disc player that can play high definition video.
“When we look into the audio visual world, the time has clearly come for the era of high definition. Broadcasting, high definition camcorders, Blu-ray and high-definition TVs are all expanding in the market,” Hideyuki Furumi, senior general manager of Sony’s VAIO business group, said at a press conference yesterday.
“As part of the Sony family, VAIO will play a vital role in expanding high definition into the PC world,” he said.
When asked whether Sony would join the low-cost PC market, the company said it is closely monitoring market development, but the final decision will still require evaluation.
Despite a global economic slowdown, Sony said it had not seen a decline in demand, and expected sales to continue to grow this quarter. The Japanese firm expected to reach US$10 billion in sales globally by 2010.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained