■ TELECOMS
iPhone comes to Taiwan
Taiwan’s three major mobile phone operators will begin selling Apple Inc’s iPhone 4 this week, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported, without citing its sources. Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) all plan to start selling the device on Friday, the report said.
■ ELECTRONICS
Lenovo to build own apps
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), China’s biggest PC maker, aims to do in-house development of smartphone applications as the company tries to grab share from Apple Inc, chairman Liu Chuanzhi (柳傳志) said yesterday. “Hardware is our foundation,” Liu told the Netrepreneur Summit in Hangzhou, China. “Besides hardware, there is the software content we also must think about.” He added that the company was not capable of doing some of these things now, so “we must move in this direction because the market for handsets is very competitive.”
■ MINING
Vale looks to China for funds
Brazilian mining giant Vale announced plans on Friday to borrow about US$1.2 billion from China to finance the construction of ships to transport minerals to the Asian economic giant. Vale, the world’s biggest iron ore producer, said it would get a credit from the Export-Import Bank of China and Bank of China Ltd. The funding will help produce 12 Chinamax transport ships at China’s Rongsheng naval yards, which Vale will then purchase.
■ AVIATION
Air China to buy four planes
Air China (中國國際航空) announced on Friday a deal to buy four planes from Boeing, citing a list price of US$1.15 billion but saying it received “significant price concessions” on the transaction. The flag-carrier did not name the actual price it would pay for the planes, but said it enjoyed a similar discount in another deal with Boeing last month. Air China said it expected to take delivery of the Boeing 777-300 planes between mid-2013 and mid-2014.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Chrysler execs sue firm
More than 450 Chrysler bosses — including former chairman Lee Iacocca — sued Daimler AG and Cerberus on Friday claiming they lost US$100 million in pensions in the automaker’s bankruptcy. One of the lawyers, Sheldon Miller, said supplemental pensions were not transferred to the new Chrysler during its restructuring last year.
■ MEDIA
‘NY Times’ starts News.me
The New York Times is teaming up with technology incubator Betaworks to create a personalized news service called News.me. Betaworks companies include TweetDeck, a popular program for using Twitter, and Bit.ly, a tool for shortening Web addresses or URLs. Betaworks CEO John Borthwick said the News.me product would be launched later this year, initially as an application for Apple’s iPad.
■ REAL ESTATE
HRE gets loan guarantees
Nationalized German lender Hypo Real Estate Holding AG (HRE) has been granted loan guarantees for up to another 40 billion euros (US$51 billion) by the government’s financial sector rescue fund. The fund said on Friday the extra guarantees were being granted to forestall any liquidity squeeze as HRE moves ahead with putting troubled assets into a so-called “bad bank.”
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
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
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