AUTO MAKERS
Suzuki riled at Volkswagen
Suzuki Motor Corp says it has sent Volkswagen AG a notice accusing it of numerous breaches of their 2009 alliance agreement. Suzuki is seeking “remedies” from Volkswagen or a return of its shares. Volkswagen owns 19.9 percent of Suzuki under the partnership inked two years ago. Suzuki’s board of directors decided last month to dissolve the alliance. Chief executive Osamu Suzuki says the deal was intended to give Suzuki access to Volkswagen’s technologies. He says he is “disappointed that we have not received what we were promised.” However, Volks-wagen said it has no plans to sell its stake in Suzuki.
INTERNET
Hulu wants to stay single
The owners of the popular video-streaming Web site Hulu have decided against selling it despite the reported interest of heavy hitters including Apple, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. News Corp, Disney and the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners announced in a joint statement late on Thursday that they would hang on to the site, which streams free television episodes with ads. NBC Universal, another owner, was not named in the statement. Hulu, which broadcasts television shows through on-demand streaming, said in July that it had 875,000 paid subscribers and was on track to approach half a billion US dollars in revenue this year.
INVESTMENT
Hedge fund tycoon jailed
Raj Rajaratnam, a self-made hedge fund tycoon convicted in the biggest Wall Street trading scandal in a generation, was ordered on Thursday to serve 11 years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever in an insider-trading case but far less than prosecutors sought. The sentencing caps a prosecution, marked by secret wiretaps of Rajaratnam and his associates, that shocked the investment world. Rajaratnam once ran a US$7 billion hedge fund, but was found guilty of running a network of informants who provided him with corporate secrets. The sentence was lighter than the 19-and-a-half-year minimum term that prosecutors had sought.
ENTERTAINMENT
Apple looking for movie deal
Apple is in talks with Hollywood studios about offering its new iCloud services for movies. That would allow people to buy movies on iTunes and then watch them on any Apple-made device without needing to transfer or save files. That’s according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because talks are ongoing and Apple has not finalized agreements with all of them. Movies were a big omission from the system Apple launched on Wednesday. In a free update to its iOS mobile operating system, the update allows for music, books and apps bought through iTunes to be automatically synced on multiple Apple devices without the need for a physical connection.
TELECOMS
Sony Ericsson breaks even
Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson has posted a break-even third quarter, with profits shrinking because of lower margins, partially offset by lower operating expenses. Net profit fell to 0 from 49 million euros (US$67.6 million) in the same quarter last year, while sales dipped slightly to 1.59 billion euros, from 1.6 billion euros a year earlier. Sony Ericsson yesterday said its Android-based Xperia smartphones now account for more than 80 percent of its sales. It said it would shift its entire portfolio to smartphones next year.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained