AUTOMOBILES
Toyota wants cars to ‘tweet’
Toyota Motor Corp is setting up a social networking service with the help of a US Internet company and Microsoft so drivers can interact with their cars in ways similar to Twitter and Facebook. Toyota. and Salesforce.com, based in San Francisco, announced an alliance yesterday to launch “Toyota Friend,” a private social network for Toyota owners that works similar to tweets on Twitter. In a demonstration at a Tokyo showroom, an owner of a plug-in Prius hybrid found out through a cellphone message from his Prius called “Pre-boy” that he should remember to recharge his car overnight. Toyota’s service, built on open-source cloud platforms that are the specialty of Salesforce.com, as well as on Microsoft’s platform, will start in Japan next year, and will be offered later worldwide, Toyota said.
SOFTWARE
Mahindra posts loss
India’s recovering fraud-hit software outsourcer Mahindra Satyam yesterday swung to an unexpected quarterly net loss, from a profit the previous quarter, due to one-off US lawsuit costs. The company showed a fourth-quarter net loss of 3.27 billion rupees (US$72 million) for the three months to the end of March, compared to a net profit of 589 million rupees in the previous quarter ended last December. In response, Satyam’s shares fell nearly 6 percent to a day’s low of 72.3 rupees at the Bombay Stock Exchange. Analysts had forecasted a profit for the quarter.
THAILAND
Exports fuel fast growth
Economic growth accelerated to the quickest pace in a year in the first quarter of this year, helped by surging exports, official data showed yesterday. GDP expanded 2 percent compared with the previous quarter, and by 3 percent from a year earlier, the government’s economic planning agency said. The economy grew by 1.3 percent quarter-on-quarter in the In October-December period. The agency maintained its forecast for GDP growth this year of 3.5 to 4.5 percent. With inflation also soaring, the robust figures added to expectations that the central bank will increase the official cost of borrowing again soon in an attempt to prevent the economy overheating.
ECONOMY
Concerns grow about Europe
Rising concerns emerged yesterday over the state of European economic recovery — with key indicators slowing sharply, and eurozone stragglers behind Germany and France showing signs of stagnation, a widely watched survey said. London-based research giant Markit’s composite eurozone index for manufacturing and services output, compiled via company purchasing managers’ questionnaire replies, suggested eurozone growth slowed to a seven-month low this month. Its index fell from 57.8 last month to 55.4 this month. Any score above 50 indicates growth, and this month marked the 22 successive months of economic expansion. However, the deceleration in the rate of growth was also the largest since November 2008, Markit said. “It is not clear the extent to which this reflects temporary factors such as the timing of Easter and disruptions to supply chains emanating from the earthquake in Japan,” said Chris Williamson, Markit chief economist, a view backed by external economists. “But a deterioration in business confidence in the service sector to the weakest since July 2009 suggests that a more fundamental slowing in the pace of economic growth is occurring.”
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San