■ MOTORCYCLES
Yamaha overtakes KYMCO
Yamaha Motor Taiwan Co (台灣山葉機車) was the top seller of new motorcycles in Taiwan last month, surpassing Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽機車), which stopped offering price promotions and discounts last month amid stiff price competition. Yamaha sold 30,821 new motorcycles last month, up 18.8 percent from a year earlier, helped by strong sales of its 100cc scooters, statistics compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and Kwang Yang showed. Kwang Yang, better known as KYMCO, slid to the No. 3 spot last month with 28,325 new motorcycles sold, down 3.5 percent from a year earlier. The company was the only one among the nation’s three major motorcycle manufacturers that saw its sales decline last month. Sanyang Industry Co (三陽工業), which sells motorcycles under the SYM brand, ranked third last month by selling 26,916 new motorcycles, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier.
■ SMARTPHONES
AT&T testing new BlackBerry
A delayed top-of-the-line BlackBerry phone from Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) is still undergoing testing by AT&T Inc, and RIM’s co-CEO implied that the carrier wanted to avoid the chorus of complaints about performance that greeted the new iPhone this summer. RIM said in May that the BlackBerry Bold 9000 would go on sale this summer. It has gone on sale in some foreign markets, but is still not available in the US, and no date has been announced. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said on Thursday the phone was still undergoing the certification process in which AT&T tests all new handsets to make sure they work well on its wireless network.
■ BEVERAGES
Coke bottler seeks support
Venezuela’s Coca-Cola bottler is seeking government support to end a conflict with former workers that it says has cost some US$5 million in lost sales. Coca-Cola FEMSA de Venezuela SA legal director Rodrigo Anzola says he has met with the president of Venezuela’s national assembly to solicit her help in resolving the conflict. More than 11,000 former employees began blocking plants and distribution centers belonging to the Mexican-owned bottler on Wednesday. They say the company owes them US$520 million in social security payments.
■ PETROLEUM
Myanmar oil, gas deal inked
A Vietnamese company has signed a deal to explore for offshore oil and gas in Myanmar, a state news report in Yangon said yesterday. The Petrovietnam Exploration Production Corp Ltd, Joint Venture Vietsovpetro and a private Burmese company, Eden Group Company Ltd, signed a contract on Friday for exploration, drilling and production of oil and gas in the Gulf of Martaban, the Myanma Ahlin daily reported.
■ AVIATION
AirAsia exploring options
AirAsia, the region’s largest low-cost carrier, said yesterday it is exploring “various options,” following a newspaper report that it may soon be privatized. “We have continuously been exploring various options at both shareholders and company level,” group deputy chief executive officer Kamarudin Meranum told reporters. “There is nothing to confirm at the moment,” he said in response to the report in business newspaper the Edge. “[AirAsia] has generated a lot of interest but there has always been skepticism about its business model from investors looking at short term returns,” the weekly cited an unnamed source as saying.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure