A total of 327,000 new cars were sold throughout the nation last year, up 11.3 percent from a year earlier as the economy rebounded from the doldrums of the global financial crisis, a car dealer said yesterday.
“The 11.3 percent increase is significant” and indicated that a growing domestic economy has restored consumer confidence and boosted private consumption, said Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the Taiwanese distributor for Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corp.
Hotai Motor said the 327,000 units included 75,166 imported cars, 24.4 percent more than in 2009. The strong growth in imported vehicle sales was helped by such favorable factors as the launch of new models and the depreciation of the euro.
Last month alone, car sales nationwide totaled 30,808 units, down 31.5 percent from a year earlier and 5.9 percent lower than in November, while sales of imported cars reached 7,580 units, down 17.2 percent year-on-year, but up 8.8 percent month-on-month, Hotai Motor said.
Hotai Motor said the fall in last month’s sales reflected tight supply among local carmakers, who were unable to meet demand and were forced to pile up orders for delivery this month.
The car dealer said it still has more than 10,000 units on order from last month awaiting delivery.
Hotai Motor said that this month is the peak season for the new car market, and sales for the month would reach 45,000 units.
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