AUTOMAKERS
Mitsubishi cuts losses
Mitsubishi Motors Corp reduced its losses in the April-December period, thanks to cost cuts and better sales in Europe and Asia. The Tokyo-based manufacturer said yesterday it booked a net loss of ¥2.25 billion (US$27.6 million) for the nine months, compared with a ¥25.7 billion loss a year earlier. Revenue rose 38 percent to ¥1.31 trillion. Demand was particularly robust in Asia, where sales grew in China and Southeast Asia, the company said. That helped offset the impact of a strong yen. Mitsubishi said there had been a “growing sense of uncertainty about the future of the world economy” amid European debt concerns and the yen’s sharper-than-expected appreciation.
COMPUTERS
LG to launch tablet in US
LG Electronics said yesterday it would release its first tablet computer in the US in March as it prepares to go head to head with Apple’s iPad. LG said the G-slate was among the first tablet models to run on the “Honeycomb” operating system, which is Google’s latest generation of Android platforms designed for mobile devices with large screens. The G-slate features a 8.9-inch screen, smaller than the iPad’s nearly 10-inch display, but larger than the seven-inch screen of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Tab. LG did not give a price for the new gadget. The world’s third-largest handset maker said the release date for the G-slate’s global release would be disclosed later this month.
INTERNET
Google offers check-in
Google on Tuesday began letting smartphone users check into spots on the go as the Internet star jumped into the hot location-based services arena with Facebook, Foursquare and Gowalla. The check-in feature was added to a Latitude service that lets people with GPS-enabled Android smartphones share their whereabouts with selected friends. The new Latitude service works with a 5.1 version of Google Maps for devices running on Android software.
AVIATION
Boeing plans new tanker bid
Boeing said on Tuesday it would submit a new, “final” bid for a US$35 billion contract to supply the US military with 179 aerial refueling tankers, as it tries to beat European rival Airbus. A Boeing spokesman said the firm and US Air Force officials held talks on Monday to discuss the company’s proposal and revisions would follow. “This was our last opportunity to get feedback from the Air Force on our proposal before the end of the tanker competition,” Bill Barksdale said in a company blog post. “Based on this feedback, we’re now making final adjustments to our bid, which we will provide February 11 to the Air Force,” he said.
BANKING
Citigroup takes over EMI
US bank Citigroup took control of troubled music company EMI from private equity owner Guy Hands on Tuesday, bringing an end to a long ownership battle and teeing up the firm behind Coldplay and The Beatles for its next possible sale. Hands, one of the most high-profile private equity bosses in Europe, bought EMI at the height of the buyouts boom in 2007 for £4 billion (US$6.4 billion), with Citigroup underwriting all the debt. EMI’s management welcomed the change. The company said it would continue under the same management. PricewaterhouseCoopers said it was appointed as administrator after the Terra Firma investment vehicle defaulted on its loan facilities.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Elpida posts massive loss
Japanese semiconductor maker Elpida Memory said yesterday it plunged into a massive loss in the three months to December on a sharp fall in chip prices amid faltering demand for personal computers. Elpida, the world’s third-largest maker of DRAM chips after South Korean rivals Samsung and Hynix, also blamed the strength of the Japanese yen against other currencies in mitigating cost-cutting measures for a net loss of ¥29.6 billion (US$363 million), compared with a ¥21.1 billion profit the previous year. Sales plunged 35.7 percent to ¥97.1 billion. Elpida expressed hopes that solid demand for smartphones and tablets will help lift its future earnings.
APPLIANCES
Electrolux profit jumps 53%
Electrolux, the world’s second-largest household appliance company, yesterday posted annual profits and dividends up more than 50 percent, but said this year would provide only “modest” growth amid rising costs for raw materials. Thanks to the economic recovery seen in many countries last year as well as several plant closures, the Swedish company said its net profit jumped 53 percent to 4 billion kronor (US$627 million) last year. Electrolux meanwhile posted a 3 percent drop in sales to 106.33 billion kronor for last year, but said that disregarding an unfavorable exchange rate its sales actually swelled 1.5 percent.
LUXURY GOODS
‘Greater China’ to lead way
“Greater China” will become the world’s biggest market for luxury goods by 2020 as rising incomes drive demand for products from companies including LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said. Chinese consumers are the biggest buyers of Louis Vuitton products and represent 28 percent of sales for Swatch Group AG and 11 percent at Hermes International, according to a CLSA report distributed yesterday. The “greater China region” typically refers to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Luxury goods companies expect half their global growth to come from the country in the next decade and for greater China to account for 44 percent of global sales by 2020, up from 15 percent, CLSA said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche profit rises 4 percent
Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG yesterday reported a 4 percent rise in full-year net profit to 8.89 billion Swiss francs (US$9.52 billion), as currency swings and severance pay depressed earnings. Sales fell 3 percent to SF47.47 billion last year. Growth in sales of Roche’s anti-cancer drugs such as Avastin, Rituxan and Herceptin were unable to compensate for the anticipated drop in sales of influenza treatment Tamiflu, and the surge in the Swiss franc compared with other currencies.
RUSSIA
Economy grows 4 percent
The finance minister says the country’s economy grew more than expected over the past year and that the government is undertaking initiatives to accelerate growth further. Alexei Kudrin says the economy grew 4 percent last year, better than the anticipated 3.8 percent. Speaking at the Russia Forum, a gathering of business leaders often described as the Russian equivalent of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kudrin said on Tuesday that growth could have been higher if Russia had not suffered severe heat and drought last year that affected food prices and grain exports. He says Russia is aiming for annual growth of 7 to 8 percent in the next few years.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to