AUTOMAKERS
Toyota sales up 28 percent
Toyota sold 7.4 million vehicles around the world in the first nine months of this year, up 28 percent from a year earlier. However, anti-Japanese sentiment that has flared in China over a territorial dispute could unseat it as the world’s top automaker. Last month Toyota’s vehicle sales in China dropped to 44,100 from 86,000 the year before. In August, Toyota sold 75,280 vehicles in China, down 15 percent. Toyota reclaimed its crown as the world’s top automaker from General Motors Co in the first half, selling 4.97 million vehicles globally.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford ends UK manufacturing
Ford Motor Co told British unions on Thursday that it would scrap its Southampton van factory and an associated stamping facility in Dagenham in the middle of next year, slashing 1,400 jobs and ending vehicle manufacturing by Ford in Britain. The move comes a day after Ford announced it would close a major car plant in Genk, Belgium, in late 2014. In all, Ford has cut 6,200 jobs and reduced European production capacity by 18 percent to save US$450 million to US$$500 million a year.
IT
NEC books profit
Japanese IT giant NEC yesterday booked a US$100 million profit in its fiscal first half, reversing a year-ago loss, thanks to a boost in sales and cost-cutting. The company said it earned ¥8 billion (US$100 million) in the three months to the end of September, compared with an ¥11 billion loss in the same period last year, while sales edged up 0.3 percent to ¥1.45 trillion. The company left its full-year forecast unchanged, projecting a net profit of ¥20 billion on sales of ¥3.15 trillion for the year to March next year.
ELECTRONICS
LG Display returns to profit
LG Display Co returned to profit for the first time in more than a year as strong demand for the iPhone 5 and tablet computers increased sales of its display panels. The South Korean company earned 158 billion won (US$144 million) in the July-September quarter, turning around from a loss of 688 billion won a year earlier. It was its first quarterly profit since last year’s April-June quarter. LG Display’s third-quarter operating profit of 253 billion won was its first operating profit in two years. Revenue totaled 7.6 trillion won.
AGRICULTURE
Dairy giant to launch fund
New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra is launching a fund on the New Zealand and Australian stock markets worth at least NZ$500 million (US$410 million). However, the cooperative owned by farmers is not offering shares in itself. Rather, it is allowing investors to buy into a fund that will give them dividends. It is the first time non-farmers will be able to invest in Fonterra. The Fonterra fund is expected to begin trading on Nov. 30.
LOGISTICS
FedEx to open Shanghai hub
Global delivery company FedEx has announced plans to open a US$100 million air cargo hub in Shanghai. US-based FedEx Corp on Thursday signed an agreement with Shanghai’s airport operator to set up the international express and cargo hub to be completed in early 2017. The new FedEx hub at Shanghai’s main international airport, Pudong, will triple the capacity of its current facility, by processing up to 36,000 items an hour, a statement said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to