ELECTRONICS
Sony president to step down
Welsh-born Sony president Howard Stringer is to step down as the Japanese games, music and electronics giant’s president, reports said yesterday, while remaining CEO and chairman. The move puts his reported successor, Sony executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai, a games and music veteran, in pole position to ultimately take over at the top of the company. Sony is planning a drastic restructuring under Hirai to try to return to profit, the Nikkei Shimbun economic daily said, saying that the group is braced to report its fourth consecutive annual loss for the year ending in March.
PETROLEUM
West prepares for blockade
Iran on Friday announced new military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, but the West has readied plans to use strategic oil stocks to replace almost all Persian Gulf oil lost if Iran blocks the waterway, industry sources and diplomats said. They said senior executives of the International Energy Agency discussed on Thursday an existing plan to release up to 14 million barrels per day of government-owned oil stored in the US, Europe, Japan and other importers. This rate of release could be kept up for a month, offsetting most of the 16 million barrels a day of crude passing through the world’s most important shipping lane that could be halted by an Iranian blockade.
GREEN TECHNOLOGY
German solar projects surge
German solar projects surged last month as developers rushed to complete systems before subsidies fall, driving total installation last year close to the record posted in 2010. Developers installed between 2 gigawatts and 3 gigawatts of panels last month, and total volume for last year will approach the 7 gigawatts reported the year before, the BSW-Solar lobby group said in an e-mailed statement. The figures add to pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to curtail subsidies that have supported a three-year boom, making Germany the world’s biggest market for solar power. They also indicate strengthening demand that may help offset the plunging price of panels that has depressed the shares of manufacturers from Q-Cells SE to LDK Solar Co. The strength of the installations will probably trigger an automatic 15 percent cut in subsidies beginning in July, the lobby group said.
TELECOMS
Nokia to unveil Ace phone
Nokia Oyj will unveil its first Windows Phone for AT&T Inc at the Consumer Electronics Show tomorrow, two people familiar with the matter said, boosting an effort by Microsoft Corp to regain market share lost to Apple Inc and Google Inc. Nokia and AT&T, the -second--largest US wireless carrier, will announce plans to begin selling the Nokia Ace in the coming months, said the people, who declined to be identified because the arrangements are private. The handset will be the first Windows Phone to use the next-generation wireless technology known as long-term evolution, the people said. AT&T is set to become the biggest US carrier to announce a Nokia Windows handset, underscoring the agreement’s importance to Microsoft. Nokia is working to revive sales after it lost its ranking of world No. 1 smartphone maker to Samsung Electronics Co in the third quarter, researcher Gartner Inc said. The Nokia Ace will run the newest version of the Windows Phone software, one of the people said. While the price has not been finalized, the device might sell for US$249 with a two-year contract, the person 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