■ENERGY
Alaska approves pipeline
Alaska lawmakers have approved a state license for TransCanada Corp to pursue a natural gas pipeline. The approval ends a decades-long battle to open up North Slope natural gas for use on the North American market. The state Senate approved the bill on Friday; the House gave its approval last week. It only awaits the signature of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who has backed the Canadian proposal from the start. The license does not guarantee construction, but TransCanada must move forward on federal permitting applications for the 2,735km pipeline, which is estimated to cost between US$26 billion and US$30 billion.
■AUTOMOBILES
Car sales drop in US
The lowest auto demand in the US since 1993, soaring fuel prices and a weak economy have impacted General Motors, Toyota and Chrysler, which on Friday reported a drop in sales last month. Troubled US car giant General Motors reported a 27 percent decline in US sales last month, as well as a massive second-quarter loss of US$15.5 billion, or US$27.33 per share. GM and its US competitors Ford and Chrysler have been hit by a fall-off in the sales of sports utility vehicles because of high gas prices and are now trying to switch production to smaller, more economical cars. Chrysler’s sales last month were 98,109 units, 29 percent below the same period last year.
■AVIATION
Airbus sells German plant
European aircraft maker Airbus said on Friday it had sold its plant at Laupheim in Germany to German armaments company Diehl and its partner Thales. No details were provided on the financial details of the sale, which is effective from Oct. 1 and is subject to competition authority approval. Diehl, based in Nuremberg in the southern German state of Bavaria, is to hold 51 percent of the company, while French defense concern Thales holds the rest. Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said the sale was a significant element in the implementation of the Power8 program aimed at cutting costs at Airbus.
■MARKET
Managua market destroyed
A huge fire destroyed Managua’s landmark Oriental Market, wiping out 1,500 vendor stalls and causing an estimated US$100 million in damage, local media reported early yesterday. The conflagration raged on Friday for 11 hours, destroying most of the sprawling Mercado Oriental, reputedly Central America’s largest market hall. No injuries were reported. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega promised merchants that the market hall would be rebuilt. The building had been the only one of Managua’s three main markets to survive the capital’s devastating 1972 earthquake.
■TELECOMS
India to auction airwaves
India said on Friday it plans a global auction for airwaves to offer high-speed third generation or 3G mobile phone services, a move seen reaping the government up to US$10 billion. The long-awaited announcement is expected to improve service and spur even greater growth in the world’s fastest-expanding mobile market, which has been adding 8 million new subscribers monthly. Communications Minister Andimuthu Raja said the license auction would be held by December. The government imposed a floor reserve price of 20.2 billion rupees or US$480 million for licenses, but bidding could go much higher, based on 3G auctions held elsewhere, for the 60 megahertz of spectrum up for grabs.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by