COMPUTERS
App downloads hit 10 billion
Apple’s App Store hit 10 billion downloads on Saturday, the California company announced. “Thank you. Ten billion times. The App Store has reached 10 billion downloads. Thanks for getting us there,” Apple said in a message on its Web site. The App Store offers more than 300,000 free and paid mini-programs known as applications, or apps, for Apple’s popular iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Apple reported a record quarterly net profit of US$6 billion last Tuesday, a day after the company’s iconic chief executive, Steve Jobs, announced he was going on medical leave.
SHIPPING
Dubai World gets financing
The shipbuilding and repair arm of indebted state conglomerate Dubai World says it has secured US$200 million in immediate financing and plans to begin talks with creditors to restructure its debt. Drydocks World said in a statement on Saturday that seven of its existing lenders provided a US$200 million working capital loan. That financing is good through the end of April. The company says it hopes to complete the broader debt restructuring in the coming months.
ACCOUNTING
Firms to miss profit targets
UK companies will miss more of their own profit forecasts this year as government spending cuts restrain the economy, business adviser Ernst & Young LLP said. Publicly traded companies announced 196 so-called profit warnings last year, a 12-year low, as the UK recovered from recession, according to an e-mailed report published yesterday by Ernst & Young’s UK unit, based in London. “There are already signs that 2011 could be more testing for some parts of the UK economy,” Keith McGregor, restructuring partner at Ernst & Young, said in the report.
TRADE
China imposes dumping tax
China will levy an anti-dumping tax on X-ray security scanners made by European companies, the Ministry of Commerce said. An investigation showed that European makers of the scanners harmed local manufacturers by dumping the devices in the Chinese market, the ministry said yesterday in a statement on its Web site. China will impose a tax ranging from 33.5 percent to 71.8 percent on such imports for the next five years, effective today, according to the statement.
? MINING
S Korea-Ethiopia ink deal
South Korea and Ethiopia agreed to jointly develop rare metals in the African country, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement posted on its Web site yesterday. The countries will explore for rare metals such as tantalum and lithium in Ethiopia and discuss South Korea purchasing a stake in Ethiopia’s tantalum mine, the statement said, without disclosing financial terms.
? REAL ESTATE
Market stays weak in Dubai
Dubai’s real-estate industry will remain under stress with occupancy levels dropping because of “massive new supply,” according to CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. “Oversupply will remain a fixture for the foreseeable future in both the office and residential sectors, but some of the negativity may be offset by forecasts of a significant economic recovery over the next two years,” CB Richard Ellis said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Residential apartment lease rates in both freehold and non-freehold areas of Dubai dropped by about 4 percent in the fourth quarter, while they fell 17 percent on a year-on-year basis, CB Richard Ellis said.
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],”
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
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