INTERNET
Facebook delays IPO
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, plans to wait until late next year before going public, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The newspaper, citing people close to the company, said Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg “wants to wait until next September or later in order to keep employees focused on product developments rather than a pay-out.” CNBC business news network reported earlier this year that Facebook was likely to hold an initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of next year.
COMMUNICATIONS
Jha may receive US$66m
Cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc on Wednesday said that CEO Sanjay Jha stood to get US$66 million if the deal to sell his company to Google Inc goes through. A regulatory filing by Motorola shows that Jha will get US$13.2 million in cash and US$52.4 million for his stock options and shares if the US$12.5 billion acquisition is completed. The deal was announced a month ago. The companies expect it to close by the end of the year or early next year, after getting antitrust approval.
INTERNET
YouTube to allow editing
YouTube on Wednesday added an editing tool that lets creators of videos make changes to snippets after they have been uploaded to the popular Web site. An “Edit Video” button allows changes such as adding effects, swapping soundtracks, or trimming clips right at YouTube, YouTube software engineer John Gregg said in San Francisco. Video makers have lamented that strings of online comments and view count tallies are lost when works are removed for editing and then uploaded anew to YouTube.
INTERNET
Google allows search veto
Google on Wednesday expanded the ability of users to veto search results that are not useful. An option launched early this year allowing people to block unwanted results served up at Google’s main search page was expanded to most of the Internet giant’s online venues, search quality engineer Johannes Henkel said in San Francisco. The option managed from a dashboard lets people block results so that links from that online domain will not be provided in response to future queries.
COMPUTERS
Sharp to retire Galapagos
Sharp Corp says it is ending most sales of its “Galapagos” tablet computers less than a year after launch. It will stop selling the 10.8-inch and 5.5-inch models in Japan on Sept. 30. The decision does not affect a recently launched 7-inch version sold through Internet provider eAccess Ltd. Sharp unveiled the retiring tablets in December and hoped to sell 1 million units. However, analysts suspect the gadgets fared poorly against rivals like Apple Inc’s iPad. Sharp declined to release sales figures.
INTERNET
Big three team up
AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are proposing to offer space on each other’s sites to advertisers in a bid to take on Google, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday. The report said the system would launch later this year or early next year and would allow advertisers to buy display ads on AOL, Microsoft or Yahoo sites that the Internet companies do not sell directly to marketers. The Journal said the firms had discussed the new ad system in recent weeks with executives from Omnicom Group, WPP and Publicis Groupe.
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
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],”
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
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