LG Electronics Inc, which last week introduced its first Google Nexus smartphone, yesterday said it aims to sell 100,000 units of high-end Android-based handsets per month to catch up with the competition.
“LG has been dedicated to researching and developing electronic devices that give consumers mobility and a user-friendly experience,” LG Electronics Taiwan president and CEO Kim Byung-hyung said at the launch of the firm’s new Optimus L9 smartphone.
Kim did not provide sales figures or any sales target.
Different from the Nexus, which runs on Google’s Android Jelly Bean 4.2, the Optimus L9 runs on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich version. It is equipped with LG’s Optimus user interface version 3.0 and features a 4.7-inch qHD IPS display on the front and an 8-megapixel camera on the back of the handset.
In Taiwan, LG is offering the new smartphone together with a service package from the nation’s top telecommunications operator, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信).
Chunghwa is offering the Optimus L9 at a minimum cost of NT$490 for subscribers who sign up for a service package with a minimum monthly fee of NT$1,343.
The South Korean company did not say when it would introduce the Android Jelly Bean 4.2-powered Nexus 4 in Taiwan. The company is still in negotiations with Google about the release schedule, it said.
“So far, Nexus 4 is only on sale in seven countries,” LG Electronics Taiwan’s mobile business director Jackie Kim said. “We have to follow Google’s marketing strategies to decide whether we can sell the product in Taiwan or not. We’ve been in talks.”
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained