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.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San