TELECOMS
Quake affects Ericsson supply
Top mobile telecom equipment maker Ericsson warned that Japan’s devastating earthquake would hit the supply of components, adding to concerns about a sector already hampered by shortages. “It is reasonable to expect that the events in Japan will affect supply of components, but it is too early to say to what extent,” Ericsson said in a statement yesterday. Ericsson said it did not expect the disaster in Japan to have any material impact on its first quarter sales and it had no reports of injured or missing employees there.
ENTERTAINMENT
Box office revenue plunges
Early estimates indicate a steep drop-off in box office revenue outside the US following the earthquake in Japan. International movie ticket sales plunged 60 percent last weekend from a year earlier, according to Standard & Poor’s Equity Research analyst Tuna Amobi. Amobi notes that Japan is one of Hollywood’s biggest markets, accounting for about 10 percent of international box office revenue. Meanwhile, Warner Entertainment Japan Inc says theaters will stop showing Clint Eastwood’s movie Hereafter, which has scenes depicting the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Sony Pictures is delaying the release in Japan of Battle: Los Angeles.
TELECOMS
China Mobile profits up 3.9%
China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers, says profit last year rose 3.9 percent on growing demand for mobile Internet services and as it signed up more customers. The Beijing-based company said yesterday that profit rose to 119.6 billion yuan (US$18.2 billion) last year. Revenue rose 7.3 per cent to 485.2 billion yuan. China Mobile said mobile Internet service was accounted for about a third of revenue last year.
AUTOMOBILES
Porsche revenue rises 59%
German luxury sports car maker Porsche said on Tuesday revenue rose 59 percent in the five months from August to December to a record 3.87 billion euros (US$5.4 billion). The company is making a transition from a fiscal year that runs from Aug. 1 to July 31 to one based on the normal calendar year, as is the case with Volkswagen, ahead of a planned tie-up. Operating profit rose to 688 million euros from 227 million euros in the same period in 2009.
MEDIA
Newspaper ads at 25-year low
Newspaper advertising in the US has sunk to a 25-year low as marketing budgets followed readers to the Internet, where advertising is far cheaper than what publishers have been able to command in print. Advertisers spent US$25.8 billion on newspapers’ print and digital editions last year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Newspaper Association of America. That’s the lowest amount since 1985, when total newspaper advertising stood at US$25.2 billion. After adjusting for inflation, newspaper advertising now stands at about the same level as nearly 50 years ago.
INTERNET
YouTube buys Green Parrot
Google-owned YouTube said on Tuesday that it has bought an Irish digital video company whose technology can help improve the quality of amateur footage submitted to the video-sharing site. Financial details of the acquisition of Green Parrot Pictures, which was founded by Anil Kokaram, an associate professor at the engineering school of Trinity College in Dublin, were not disclosed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by