COMMUNICATIONS
US firm to offer iPhone
US carrier Verizon Wireless announced on Tuesday it will begin offering Apple Inc’s iPhone next month, ending AT&T Inc’s monopoly and raising the prospect of millions of additional buyers of the coveted device. Verizon, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc and the UK’s Vodafone Group PLC, said the iPhone 4, the latest model of the touchscreen smartphone, will be available on its network beginning on Feb. 10. Verizon said it will offer the 16GB model of the iPhone 4 for US$199 and the 32GB version for US$299 with two-year service plans.
INDIA
Industrial production slows
Industrial production grew at the slowest pace in 18 months in November, a deceleration that may not prevent the central bank from raising interest rates this month as surging food prices drive up inflation. Output at factories, utilities and mines rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the government said in a statement in New Delhi yesterday, less than the revised 11.3 percent jump in October when the Hindu festivals of Dussehra and Diwali boosted demand for goods. The median estimate of 30 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 6.6 percent gain. Manufacturing grew 2.3 percent in November after an 11.9 percent gain in October, the report showed. Consumer goods production fell 3.1 percent compared with a 9.6 percent increase in the previous month.
GERMANY
Expansion hits 20-year high
The country enjoyed its fastest economic expansion in two decades last year as booming exports spurred hiring and consumer spending. GDP jumped 3.6 percent, the most since data for a reunified nation began in 1992, after slumping 4.7 percent in 2009, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said yesterday. The figure was in line with the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 28 economists. GDP probably rose 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, the statistics office said. The official fourth-quarter report is due on Feb. 15. The Bundesbank expects Europe’s largest economy to expand 2 percent this year and 1.5 percent next year.
PHILIPPINES
Export growth flounders
Philippine export growth slowed to a 12-month low in November as sales of electronics and manufactured goods eased. Shipments abroad grew 11.2 percent from a year earlier to US$4.14 billion after rising a revised 27.4 percent in October, the National Statistics Office said in Manila yesterday. That compares with the median forecast for a 25.2 percent gain in a Bloomberg News survey of seven economists. “It’s a rather disappointing number,” said Radhika Rao, an economist at Forecast PTE in Singapore. “It signals fading seasonal demand, which is probably waning even for the electronics sector.”
INVESTMENTS
Daley must divest stock
William Daley has about US$7.7 million worth of JPMorgan Chase & Co shares that he will need to divest to take over as US President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, according to administration officials and regulatory filings. White House lawyers also are reviewing whether Daley will have to recuse himself from some White House discussions to avoid potential conflicts stemming from his work as vice chairman of JPMorgan and his memberships on the boards of Abbott Laboratories and Boeing Co, according to an administration official.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts