US online sales in the holiday season to date are up 15 percent to US$24.6 billion, according to comScore.
The research firm said on Sunday sales on six individual days during the first 39 days of the November-to-December shopping season have exceeded US$1 billion, led by Cyber Monday, the Monday after the US Thanksgiving holiday, when sales hit US$1.25 billion.
Sales in the week ended on Friday rose 15 percent to US$5.9 billion, the Reston, Virginia, company said.
“As we enter what will be the heaviest week of the season for online retailers — beginning with ‘Green Monday’ on Dec. 12 — all signs are now pointing to a strong finish to the season,” comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said.
Over the past six years, “Green Monday” — a term coined by eBay Inc and traditionally the second Monday of December — has consistently ranked among the top spending days of the season, although it is no longer the top online spending day.
Fulgoni said a possible reason for that change is the emergence of “Free Shipping Day,” which occurs on Friday this year.
“Online spending during the heaviest week of the season is being more evenly distributed throughout the week, whereas in the past there was a much higher concentration of spending during the early part of the week,” Fulgoni said.
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
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