LG Electronics Inc, the world’s third-largest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) televisions, aims to overtake Sony Corp as the second-biggest this year, driven by stronger-than-expected demand.
The company is maintaining its LCD TV-shipment target of 18 million units for this year, which will be achievable, Simon Kang, head of the company’s home-entertainment division, told reporters in Seoul yesterday.
Global revenue from LCD TVs will drop 6 percent this year to US$76 billion, researcher DisplaySearch said last week, higher than its previous estimate of US$66 billion. Worldwide LCD TV shipments will rise 21 percent to 127 million units, compared with an earlier prediction of 120 million, because of higher demand from China and as more consumers replace bulkier glass-tube sets, according to the Austin, Texas-based research firm.
The South Korean company yesterday introduced its latest LCD TVs using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as backlights instead of conventional fluorescent lights.
Global shipments of LCD TV panels with LED backlights will increase to 3.3 million units this year compared with 438,000 last year, according to researcher iSuppli Corp this month.
LED backlights, illuminated by glowing chips and used in products such as Apple Inc’s laptop computers, are brighter and consume less power than conventional fluorescent tubes.
LG expects global shipments of LCD TVs with LED backlights to rise almost 10-fold to 30 million units next year from 3.1 million this year. The firm aims to sell 400,000 sets this year and 3 million to 4 million units next year.
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