INDIA
Inflation rises unexpectedly
Inflation unexpectedly accelerated last month, crimping the central bank’s scope to extend interest-rate cuts and bolster economic growth. The benchmark wholesale-price index rose 7.23 percent from a year earlier, fueled by a 19 percent jump in the prices of fruit and vegetables, after climbing 6.89 percent in March, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement yesterday.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Canon eyes full automation
Canon Inc is moving toward fully automating digital camera production in an effort to cut costs. Company spokesman Jun Misumi said yesterday that the move would likely be completed over the next few years. He declined to give a date. Japanese manufacturers have recently moved production abroad to offset earnings damage from the soaring yen, but Canon believes full automation will help keep manufacturing in Japan. It denies the move might cause job cuts.
SHIPBUILDING
Record container ship started
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said yesterday it had started work on the world’s largest container vessel, with a deck big enough to accommodate four football pitches. The company said the 400m-long ship would carry up to 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit containers. It is scheduled to be delivered to Danish shipper A.P. Moeller-Maersk in the second half of next year. The vessel is the first of 20 such container ships that Daewoo will build by 2015 under a US$3.6 billion order from the Danish company.
METALS
Profits fall 84% at Rusal
Russian aluminum giant United Company Rusal yesterday said first-quarter net profit dived 84 percent from a year earlier because of higher costs and falling prices. Rusal said its net profit for the three months that ended on March 31 totaled US$74 million compared to US$451 million over the same period in the previous year. Revenue fell 3.7 percent to US$2.88 billion.
AVIATION
JAL records US$2.33bn profit
Japan Airlines (JAL), which went bankrupt two years ago in one of the country’s biggest-ever corporate failures, yesterday logged an annual net profit of US$2.33 billion, thanks to cost--cutting efforts. The carrier said its net profit for the year through March was ¥186.6 billion on sales of ¥1.2 trillion, as a strong yen saw more Japanese travel overseas, although demand was hit by last year’s earthquake and tsunami disaster. It had forecast a ¥160 billion net profit.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is