Samsung Electronics Co chairman Lee Kun-hee urged employees to develop new businesses that can help the world’s largest maker of mobile phones and TVs fend off a slow global economy and increased competition.
“There’s ongoing competition between global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes,” Lee said, according to a summary of a speech he gave to employees yesterday.
“The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find new businesses that Samsung’s future will hinge on,” he said.
Samsung Group, which runs 82 affiliate companies and generates about 20 percent of South Korea’s GDP, should boost investment and create new jobs, Lee said, according to the summary distributed by the group via e-mail.
The group’s flagship electronics unit, Suwon-based Samsung Electronics Co, is the world’s biggest seller of mobile phones, televisions, memory chips and flat-panel displays.
The company posted a record 165 trillion won (US$155 billion) in revenue in 2011. The company will next week release its fourth-quarter earnings estimates for last year.
In related news, Samsung Electronics lost a bid to keep sales data of some of its products sealed in a US patent dispute with Apple Inc.
US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, on Tuesday denied Samsung’s request to keep the sales figures secret while the company appeals an earlier sealing order.
Apple won a US$1.05 billion award on Aug. 24 last year after a jury found Samsung infringed six Apple patents on technology used in Samsung phones and devices.
Apple is awaiting a decision from Koh on its request for additional damages against Samsung for infringement after the iPhone maker lost its bid to block US sales on 26 of the Galaxy maker’s devices.
Koh ruled on Dec. 10 that Samsung must file an exhibit which lists the total number of units of certain Samsung products sold during certain time periods.
“Samsung’s appeal involves pricing information and profit margins,” Koh said.
The exhibit at issue “only lists the number of units sold in each of several recent months,” she said.
In a separate order on Tuesday, Koh granted Samsung’s request to delay the publication of part of a document showing per-unit operating profit for two Samsung phones, pending an appeal.
The judge denied most other requests to seal documents from both Apple and Samsung, saying there was a lack of a “compelling reason” that would require their sealing.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts