More than two decades after exiting the television manufacturing business, General Electric Co (GE) is entering a new joint partnership that will make GE-branded flat panel TVs that connect to the Internet.
The giant conglomerate is granting the use of its brand for 10 years and taking a 49 percent stake in the venture with Tatung Co (大同) of Taiwan to make the liquid-crystal displays that also play Internet videos.
The online functionality requires a separately sold set-top box that the venture hopes to eliminate in later versions. For now, a standard remote — without a keyboard or mouse — will direct online navigation and TV programming.
“Instead of just flipping through channels, people want to command and control it,” said Peter Weedfald, chief marketing officer for the joint venture, General Displays & Technologies LLC.
But longtime former GE executive Noel Tichy, a professor at the School of Business at the University of Michigan, downplayed the investment for the company, which posted US$173 billion in revenue last year.
“This is not a huge strategic move,” Tichy said. “The revenues off this are going to be a rounding error.”
The product, to be made at Tatung’s plants in China, Taiwan and Mexico, is expected to hit shelves in March or April in North America. Pricing has not been determined.
General Electric sold its GE and RCA divisions to Thomson SA in 1987 and ended 66 years of GE-branded TVs in 2005.
The company hopes to capitalize on studies showing that most of the many people who use computers to watch TV programs would prefer to watch them on regular TV sets.
GE will use its subsidiary, NBC Universal, to supply Internet videos and overcome the technical difficulties in doing so.
“Being part of the GE family, those conversations happen seamlessly,” said Darren Feher, NBC Universal’s chief technology officer.
Weedfald said GE had high expectations for the venture.
“Their expectation of us is to grow and be a major player over the next three to seven years,” he said.
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
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
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last