MINERALS
China to raise rare earth tax
China plans to raise export taxes on some rare earths in its annual adjustment of import and export taxes that takes effect on Jan. 1, the Chinese Ministry of Finance said yesterday. China will keep low import tariffs on 600 important materials and components while continuing to tax exports of energy-intensive commodities such as coal, crude oil, fertilizer and nonferrous metals, the Ministry said in a statement on its Web site. It did not give details of the specific tax changes.
MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
Samsung buys Medison
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top computer memory chipmaker, said yesterday it has signed a deal to buy a controlling stake in a top South Korean medical equipment maker. Samsung said the deal was part of its long-term strategic expansion into the medical devices business. It said it would acquire a 43.5 percent stake in Medison from private equity firm Consus Asset Management. Medison is the world’s fifth-largest ultrasound equipment maker, holding an estimated 6.7 percent share of the global market. Samsung said it would also buy a 100 percent stake in Prosonic, a South Korean manufacturer of probes and cables for ultrasound devices.
TELECOMS
Imagination buys Caustic
Imagination Technologies, the British designer of video chips in Apple’s iPhone, is to pay US$27 million for Caustic Graphics to help bring cinema-quality 3D graphics to mobile phones. Imagination also posted a 131 percent rise in adjusted pretax profit to £10.1 million (US$16 million), on revenue up 16 percent to £44 million in the six months to the end of October after its partners shipped 107 million of its chips. The company, which also makes Pure-branded digital radios, said yesterday it remained confident of good progress.
TECHNOLOGY
Dell to buy Compellent
Dell Inc said on Monday it has a deal to buy the data storage company Compellent Technologies Inc for US$884 million. The offer price is slightly more than Dell said it would pay last week, before the companies had signed a formal agreement. Dell will pay US$27.75 per share, up from US$27.50. Both companies’ boards have approved the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
SHIPBUILDING
Hyundai Heavy wins deal
South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder, said yesterday it had won a US$1.45 billion deal from a German company to build 10 container vessels. The company said it would start delivering the vessels from July 2012 under the deal with Hapag-Lloyd. With the contract, Hyundai Heavy said it has won deals valued at US$10.6 billion so far this year and its order backlog stands at US$52.7 billion.
CHINA
Inflation to rise 4% next year
China’s consumer prices are expected to rise around 4 percent next year, a government researcher said yesterday, warning economic uncertainties abroad could hinder Beijing’s efforts to curb inflation. Inflation next year will be driven by rising wages, higher commodities prices and a flood of liquidity into the economy, Yu Bin (余斌), a senior researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, told reporters. “We expect next year CPI growth will rise to around 4 percent,” Yu said. “We will face certain inflationary pressures next year, but severe inflation is rather unlikely.”
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