TECHNOLOGY
Foxconn factory reopens
A Foxconn (富士康) factory making Apple’s iPhone 5 in northern China reopened yesterday, a manager said, a day after it shut down following a huge workers’ brawl that took 5,000 police several hours to quell. A total of 40 men in Taiyuan in Shanxi Province suffered injuries after a “personal dispute between several employees” escalated into a 2,000-person fight in a dormitory, Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company, Hon Hai Precision Ltd (鴻海), said in a statement.
SOUTH KOREA
Ministry drafts 2013 budget
The government yesterday proposed a budget for next year that includes bigger spending on infrastructure, job creation and welfare as it seeks to mitigate the impact of the global economic slowdown. The proposal — to be presented to parliament by next month — calls for total spending of 342.5 trillion won (US$306 billion) for next year, a 5.3 percent rise over this year, while total income next year is forecast to grow by 8.6 percent to 373.1 trillion won, the finance ministry said in a statement. The aim is to balance the budget in 2014, the ministry said, revising its previous goal of achieving fiscal balance by next year.
FRANCE
Industrial confidence low
French industrial confidence held near its lowest in more than two years this month as the economy stagnates and tax increases loom. A measure of sentiment among factory executives was unchanged at 90, national statistics office Insee said in Paris yesterday. Economists expected a reading of 89, according to the median of 18 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. A gauge that includes retailers, builders and service industries fell to a three-year low of 86 from 87 last month.
GERMANY
Consumer confidence stalls
German consumer confidence is stagnating, a poll found yesterday, adding to evidence that the eurozone debt crisis is increasingly affecting Europe’s top economy. Market research company GfK said its household confidence index was forecast to remain at 5.9 points next month, the same level as the reading this month, a statement said. GfK said consumers’ willingness to spend had improved, as had their assessment of the economic situation, but they expected their own personal income situation to worsen over the coming months.
FOOD
Kellogg, Wilmar team up
Kellogg Co, the largest US maker of breakfast cereal, will set up a joint venture with Wilmar International Ltd (豐益國際) to distribute cereal and snacks in China, expanding the company’s reach in the country. The 50-50 joint venture includes manufacturing and sales of Kellogg namesake and Pringles brands, a Kellogg statement said. The start of the venture with Singapore-based Wilmar is subject to regulatory approval.
WEALTH
More super-rich in Asia
The number of super-rich in Asia is set to reach 2.67 million people by 2015, with an estimated total net worth of US$16.7 trillion, Swiss private bank Julius Baer said yesterday. The findings, announced in its 2012 Wealth Report focusing on Asia, indicated that the region’s high net worth individuals were largely immune from the economic ills affecting the rest of the world. Julius Baer also said that its high net worth individuals estimate for 2015 represented a compounded annual growth rate of 30 percent from 2010 estimates.
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
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],”