CHIPMAKERS
ProMOS in debt talks
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), which aims to merge with Elpida Memory Inc, is in talks with the government and its banks about waiving some of its debt to meet a condition stipulated by Elpida, the Yomiuri newspaper reported without saying where it got the information.
FOOD
Premiums on soy, corn rise
Cash premiums for soybeans and corn shipped this month to terminals near New Orleans rose relative to Chicago futures as US farmers reduced sales and ice on US rivers slowed barge traffic. The spot-basis bid, or premium, for soybeans delivered this month at Gulf of Mexico ports rose to US$0.62 to US$0.70 a bushel above next month’s futures, compared with US$0.62 to US$0.69 on Friday, US Department of Agriculture data showed. Corn premiums climbed to US$0.43 to US$0.53 a bushel above next month’s futures from US$0.43 to US$0.52. Soybean futures for delivery next month fell US$0.17, or 1.2 percent, to US$14.16 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.
INTERNET
Bing gains ground on Google
Industry tracking firm comScore on Friday reported that Microsoft Corp’s Bing gained ground on Google Inc’s service in the lucrative Internet search market last month. Google continued to dominate, handling 65.6 percent of “explicit core” online queries, but Bing’s share grew about 1 percent from December, while Google’s slid by about the same amount. About 16.1 percent of US online searches were done at Yahoo Inc’s Web sites, which are powered by Bing. Bing’s handling of 13.1 percent of searches brought its total share of the load to 29.2 percent.
AIRLINES
AirAsia delays deliveries
Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia Berhad has delayed the scheduled delivery of 10 of its aircraft by three years to 2015, in a bid to switch its order to more fuel--efficient planes, the company said. AirAsia agreed to order 175 Airbus SAS A320 aircraft in 2005, with a delivery schedule running from December 2005 to October 2014, but earlier deliveries have been put back several times because of its overcrowded budget terminal. Despite the deferral, AirAsia will nevertheless be taking delivery of 14 aircraft next year.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota cuts size of its board
Toyota Motor Corp, the world‘s largest automaker, plans to cut its board to at least 17 members from the current 27 to improve -decision-making after a series of product recalls in its biggest management reorganization in eight years, two people familiar with the company‘s plan said. The move, to be announced by president Akio Toyoda, will be the first since Toyota more than halved the number of board members to 27 from 58 eight years ago to help it speed up decision-making, the people said.
RETAILERS
Wal-Mart takeover approved
South Africa’s Competition Commission said it has concluded its investigation into Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s proposed purchase of a controlling stake in Massmart Holdings Ltd with a recommendation that the transaction be approved without conditions. “The next step in the approval process is the Competition Tribunal hearing, followed by its ruling on the transaction,” the commission said in a statement yesterday.
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