Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi yesterday said it planned to slash its annual costs 5 percent by 2015, or about US$5.43 billion a year, to compete with rivals including General Electric.
The announcement by Hitachi, whose products range from microchips to railways, comes after the company said last month that its nine-month net profit dived more than 61 percent year-on-year, amid a strong yen and weaker demand from Europe and China.
Its full-year sales and operating profit forecast remained unchanged at ¥9.5 trillion (US$115 billion) and ¥400 billion respectively.
Yesterday, Hitachi executive officer Makoto Ebata said the firm would boost the purchase of raw materials overseas and merge overlapping units, saying its “high-cost structure” was tied largely to sourcing expenses.
Hitachi’s sweeping “Smart Transformation Project” calls for a “shift from competition focused on the Japanese market to emphasis on true global competition” with plans for ¥450 billion a year in cuts starting in the fiscal year ending March 2016.
“The question is how to build a cost structure that will enable us to compete with overseas players,” said Ebata, who is overseeing the cost-cutting effort, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
New raw material procurement sites will be set up in emerging markets, including Russia, China, Brazil, Philippines and Indonesia, it said, while an IT services unit with six regional headquarters will be merged.
The firm will continue efforts at developing “rare earth-less” motors amid uncertainty over stable supply of the key minerals crucial for making a wide range of high tech products, it said.
Japan, a major rare-earth importer, has joined the US and EU in complaining to the WTO that China was monopolizing supply of the 17 elements. China produces about 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six