ENTERTAINMENT
Millionth Kinect sold
Microsoft said on Monday it sold 1 million Kinect motion-sensing controllers for the Xbox 360 videogame console in 10 days and is on pace to sell 5 million by the end of the year. “This is a great start to the holiday season,” Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, said in a statement. “We will continue to work with our retailer partners to keep pace with high demand and deliver against our plan to sell more than 5 million Kinect sensors worldwide by the end of this year.” Microsoft launched the Kinect in North America on Nov. 4 and in Europe last week. It launches in Asia this week.
INTERNET
Yahoo opens network
Yahoo began opening up its properties to outside writers, photographers and videographers on Monday with the launch of the “Yahoo Contributor Network.” Yahoo said the network would give freelance content creators access to popular destinations such as Yahoo’s news, finance, sports and homepages. Yahoo described the network as the “evolution” of Associated Content, a platform hosting 400,000 freelance contributors from around the US that it purchased in May for a reported US$100 million.
AUTOMOBILES
GM’s IPO to be set today
General Motors Co (GM) is expected to price its initial public offering at a minimum of US$30 per share, above the initially proposed range, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday. GM’s IPO is expected to price today and begin trading on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges tomorrow. At US$30 per share, GM would raise about US$10.95 billion in common stock. Based on a diluted share count of 1.9 billion, a US$30 per share price would give GM a market value of about US$57 billion. GM needs a market value of roughly US$70 billion for US taxpayers to break even on their US$50 billion bailout.
TELECOMS
Japan may sell NTT shares
Japan, owner of a US$24 billion stake in Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT), is considering selling shares of the former phone monopoly next fiscal year, two government officials familiar with the matter said. A decision will probably be made by next month when the government draws up next year’s budget for parliamentary approval, the people said. A sale would give Tokyo funds to pay for debt or public projects as the yen climb to a 15-year high undermines corporate profits. The government could sell almost 90 million shares, currently valued at about ¥330 billion (US$4 billion), by 2012 while retaining a required 33 percent stake.
TECHNOLOGY
EMC to buy Isilon Systems
The data storage company EMC Corp has reached a deal to buy Isilon Systems Inc for US$2.25 billion in cash, betting on a surge in demand for space to put huge amounts of digital information. EMC said on Monday that the relatively small, Seattle-based company would give its customers options for storing so-called “big data,” an area that EMC hasn’t yet tapped. Sony Corp’s record label and movie studio, for instance, use the company’s technology for storing catalogues of digital film and music files, Isilon CEO Sujal Patel said, while the Broad Institute, a project of Harvard and MIT, uses it for storing gene sequencing data.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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