SOFTWARE
HP to license out webOS
Hewlett-Packard (HP) CEO Leo Apotheker said on Wednesday the US computer giant was prepared to license the webOS operating system of newly acquired Palm to other companies. WebOS was designed by Palm for smartphones, but HP, which bought Palm for US$1.2 billion last year, plans on using it in computers, an upcoming HP tablet computer, printers and other HP devices. Apotheker also suggested that webOS could eventually replace Microsoft’s Windows as the operating system on its computers — a move that would deal a serious blow to the US software giant.
INTERNET
Twitter adds photo feature
Twitter said on Wednesday that it was adding a photo-sharing option for its users, a move that could deal a blow to existing services such as Twitpic and yfrog. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo also announced at the All Things Digital technology conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, that the San Francisco-based service was upgrading its search function. Twitter will begin allowing users to upload pictures and attach them to “tweets” directly from Twitter.com, Costolo said.
VIDEO SERVICE
Netflix looking to expand
US video giant Netflix, which has more than 23 million subscribers in the US and Canada, plans to expand to another country this year, founder Reed Hastings said on Wednesday. The Netflix chief executive said Asia would be “very important” as the company looks to grow internationally. “China’s very tough for US companies,’ he said, “but outside of China, I think [South] Korea’s a great market, Indonesia’s going to be a great market, Japan’s a great market, India’s going to be a great market.”
FINANCE
Greek bonds downgraded
Credit rating agency Moody’s has downgraded Greece’s bond ratings deeper into junk status, a further blow to the struggling country, which has been wrapping up negotiations for a vital fifth installment of international bailout loans. Moody’s downgraded Greece by three notches from a B1 rating to Caa1 with a negative outlook on Wednesday, citing increased risk that the financially stricken country would be unable to handle its debt problems without an eventual restructuring — paying creditors less than the full amount, or later than originally planned.
TRAVEL
April global travel up 16.5%
International air travel jumped the most in 10 months in April after a volcanic eruption disrupted flights in Europe a year earlier, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said. International passenger demand climbed 16.5 percent in April from a year earlier, IATA said in a statement in Singapore yesterday. Air travel in Europe gained 29 percent after it was severely affected by the volcano eruption in Iceland last year. Air travel is growing at 3 percent to 4 percent this year after eliminating all distortions, IATA chief executive Giovanni Bisignani said.
FINANCE
Citigroup shuts hedge fund
Citigroup Inc shut a US$400 million hedge fund that used the firm’s money and mathematical models to bet on stocks, a person familiar with the matter said. The company closed the Quantitative Strategies fund after announcing in April that Shakil Ahmed, the fund manager, would become head of electronic market-making for New York-based Citigroup, the person said. Ahmed also is co-head of electronic trading.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the