Amazon.com Inc, the world’s largest Internet retailer, posted profit and sales that beat analysts’ estimates and said revenue growth may accelerate this quarter as consumers start spending more following the recession.
Net income in the fourth quarter jumped 71 percent to US$384 million, or US$0.85 a share, beating estimates. Sales also topped estimates, rising 42 percent to US$9.52 billion.
Sales could rise as much as 43 percent to US$7 billion in the first quarter, more than last year’s 18 percent, the Seattle-based company said in a statement on Thursday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Sales from international operations, including those in the UK, Germany, Japan, France and China, rose 48 percent to US$4.56 billion, accounting for 48 percent of revenue, Amazon.com said. Global media sales, which includes books and digital music, advanced 29 percent to US$4.68 billion in the quarter. Before foreign exchange fluctuations, the growth rate was 23 percent.
The company’s growth in new categories such as patio furniture and downloadable films, TV and games has allowed it to get better deals from vendors, which helped boost profitability, chief financial officer Tom Szkutak said.
“Some of the categories we started in just a few years ago are becoming more meaningful,” he said on a conference call.
Apple Inc and Sony Corp are creating new competition for Amazon.com’s Kindle, which sells for US$259 and US$489. Apple’s iPad, which can display books, surf the Web and show video, starts at US$499. Sony introduced a touch-screen reader in August for US$299.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the