TELECOMS
HTC’s Chou to speak at fair
HTC Corp (宏達電) chief executive Peter Chou (周永明) will deliver a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, next month, according to the organizers. The MWC, the world’s largest mobile technology fair, will cover topics such as mobile operator strategies in developed and developing markets, cloud computing, connected consumers, mobile money, mobile operating systems and applications and next-generation networks and technologies, the GSM Association (GSMA) said recently. Other top executives speaking at the exhibition are ARM Holdings CEO Warren East, Best Buy Co CEO Brian Dunn, Electronic Arts Inc CEO John Riccitiello, Google Inc executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Nokia Corp president and CEO Stephen Elop, the GSMA said.
TRADE
Ma plans free trade in south
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Wednesday said a free-trade area would be set up soon in the south, as the government begins moves to joining a trans-Pacific free-trade alliance. “In order to follow the trend of regional economic integration, the government has been pushing hard for free trade in the hope that Taiwan can join the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] in 10 years,” Ma said during a visit to Greater Kaohsiung. He said some free-trade areas — which allow the tax-free flow of capital and goods — had to be set up in the country before it can achieve its goal of joining the TPP. The first such free-trade area will be established in Kaohsiung, he said in a statement released by the Presidential Office.
TRADE
HK exports rise 7.4 percent
Hong Kong’s exports grew a more-than-estimated 7.4 percent last month, supported by Chinese demand as shipments to the US and the UK slid. Exports rose to HK$271.8 billion (US$35 billion) after a 2 percent increase in November, the government said on its Web site yesterday. Imports increased 8.1 percent from a year earlier, leaving a trade deficit of HK$48.9 billion, the highest since at least 1952, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shipments to the US fell 0.7 percent last month from a year earlier, while those to the UK tumbled 27 percent. Exports to China jumped 14 percent and those to Japan increased 9 percent. Expert growth last month exceeded the median 3.5 percent estimate of nine economists in a Bloomberg News survey. For the full year, Hong Kong’s exports rose 10.1 percent from a year earlier, the government said.
TELECOMS
KDDI net profit drops 17%
Japanese telecoms operator KDDI yesterday said net profit for the December quarter fell 17 percent on falling income from voice calls, but it raised its full-year revenue outlook thanks to iPhone 4S sales. The country’s No. 2 telecoms firm said its net profit for the fiscal third quarter dropped to ¥54.2 billion (US$698 million) from ¥65.7 billion in the same period a year earlier. Operating profit for the quarter fell 5.4 percent to ¥117 billion from ¥124 billion a year earlier, it said. However, it did say revenue for the three months increased 5.7 percent to ¥902 billion on the back of increased data traffic because of solid demand for smartphones. The firm started selling iPhone 4S in October, becoming the second Japanese carrier to offer the popular gadget after its smaller rival Softbank.
RETAIL
H&M profit slides 2.4%
Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M), Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer, reported a fifth consecutive drop in quarterly profit as the cost of making garments increased and sales growth slowed. Net income slipped 2.4 percent to 5.36 billion kronor (US$797 million) in the three months ended Nov. 30, Stockholm-based H&M said in a statement yesterday. The average estimate was 5.37 billion kronor, according to a Bloomberg survey of 14 analysts. H&M fell as much as 2.1 percent in Stockholm trading as the retailer said the macroeconomic climate would remain “tough” in many markets this year. Increased cotton and labor costs in Asia have weighed on profit at the company, which described the situation in sourcing markets as “challenging.”
GERMANY
Consumer confidence rising
German consumer confidence will increase next month, as falling unemployment boosts the economic outlook and households’ willingness to spend even as Europe’s debt crisis remains unresolved, GfK SE said. The Nuremberg-based market research company yesterday forecast that Germany’s consumer-sentiment index, based on a survey of about 2,000 people, would rise to 5.9 from a revised 5.7 this month. Economists predicted it would remain unchanged from the initial reading of 5.6 this month, according to the median of 26 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Unemployment in Europe’s largest economy is at a two-decade low of 6.8 percent, supporting consumer spending and helping limit the impact of the eurozone turmoil. Business confidence jumped to the highest in six months this month and the IMF said on Tuesday the economy would weather a recession in the eurozone and keep growing.
SOFTWARE
HP to make webOS free
Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Wednesday said it would make its webOS mobile operating system available to the open source community by September. HP announced in December that it was planning to make webOS open source, meaning that developers anywhere can tinker with it as they wish and it will be available for anyone to use free of charge. The Palo Alto, California-based HP acquired the webOS software as part of its US$1.2 billion purchase of Palm in 2010, but later abandoned plans to make smartphones and tablet computers using the platform. “By contributing webOS to the open source community, HP unleashes the creativity of hardware and software developers to build a new generation of applications and devices,” HP said in a statement.
INTERNET
EU challenges data control
The European Commission on Wednesday launched a bid to make companies — including Internet giants such as Google or Facebook — give people more control of their personal data or face big fines. The proposal championed by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding would force all companies to get explicit consent from customers to collect their data, explain how it will be used and allow users to totally erase their information. Failure to comply could cost a company a fine of up to 1 million euros (US$1.3 million), or 2 percent of annual turnover. Citing a survey showing 72 percent of Europeans worry their data may be misused, Reding pressed her case to give people “the right to be forgotten” from the Internet by allowing them to make their data vanish from the Web.
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
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
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],”
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