TELECOMS
Motorola unit to cut jobs
Google’s Motorola Mobility unit will lay off about 1,200 employees, or more than 10 percent of its work force, in a bid to return to profitability, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The Journal said Motorola employees were informed about the latest cuts — which come on top of 4,000 layoffs announced in August last year — via a company e-mail sent this week. “While we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges,” the newspaper quoted the e-mail as saying. “Our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.” The layoffs will affect workers in the US, China and India, the Journal said.
INTERNET
Pandora Media CEO resigns
Pandora Media’s top executive on Thursday announced plans to step down after the Internet radio giant’s earnings report showed greater losses even as it captured more listeners. Chairman and chief executive Joe Kennedy will continue in his current role until his successor is named, the company said in a statement. In its earnings report, Pandora said it held a record 8 percent of total US radio listeners at the end of its fiscal year in January. The loss in the past quarter widened to US$14.4 million from US$8 million a year earlier, while revenues jumped to US$125 million from US$81 million.
TELECOMS
No bonus for Nokia CEO
Nokia, once the world’s biggest mobile phone maker, said on Thursday that chief executive Stephen Elop received no bonus last year, when the company posted huge losses, reducing his overall payslip by 45 percent. According to Nokia’s annual report filed to US stock exchange authorities, Elop’s earnings dropped from 7.995 million euros (US$10.46 million) in 2011 to 4.334 million euros last year. While Elop’s fixed salary increased by 6 percent to 1.08 million euros last year, his performance bonus was reduced to zero from 473,070 euros in 2011. Other forms of remuneration, including deferred compensation, stocks, stock options and benefits, were 50 percent lower than the previous year.
TIRES
Italy protests plant closure
Italian Minister of Economic Development Corrado Passera criticized a decision by the Bridgestone tire company to close a plant in southern Italy as “serious and without reason.” Passera protested in a letter to the Japanese company, released by the ministry on Thursday, that the company had failed to work with authorities to find another solution. Bridgestone Corp’s European division announced on Tuesday the closure of the passenger car tire production plant near Bari by early next year, citing a slump in demand due to declining auto sales in Europe. The company said demand for tires produced at the plant was down 13 percent last year from 2011, with no prospect for returning to earlier volumes before 2020.
CUBA
Wholesale market opens
Cuba has opened its first wholesale market to meet the demands of the private sector and state-run companies, the government said on Thursday. The market, open to state enterprise, cooperatives and independent businesses, has been set up on an experimental basis on Isla de la Juventud, Cuba’s second largest island, approximately 130km south of Havana. The market will sell food products, consumer and industrial goods, the government said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last