COMMUNICATION
Smartphones outsell mobiles
Industry tracker IDC on Friday reported that shipments of smartphones topped those of basic mobile phones for the first time ever in the first three months of this year. “Phone users want computers in their pockets,” IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo said. “The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away.” The rise of smartphones has put power in the hands of California-based Apple and South Korea’s Samsung, but Chinese companies such as ZTE (中興) and Huawei (華為) have muscled their way into the top five sellers, according to IDC. “Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE, as well as Coolpad (酷派) and Lenovo (聯想), have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones,” IDC Mobile Phone team research manager Ramon Llamas said.
AIRLINES
Dreamliner back in air
An Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner jet took off yesterday on a commercial flight, becoming the first carrier to resume flying the Boeing 787 that were grounded worldwide three months ago due to battery problems. The flight took off from Addis Ababa and headed to Nairobi. “I am very happy to see the airplane is back to the air now and I am very happy also we are the first one,” Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told journalists. The 787 would head back to Addis Ababa later yesterday, airline officials said. The 50 Dreamliners in operation worldwide were all grounded in mid-January after failures of their lithium-ion batteries on two separate aircraft.
PHARMACEUTICALS
US sues Novartis again
The US government on Friday announced its second civil fraud lawsuit against Novartis AG in four days, accusing a unit of the Swiss drugmaker of paying multimillion-dollar kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing its drugs. Authorities said the Basel-based company for a decade lavished healthy speaking fees and “opulent” meals, including a nearly US$10,000 dinner for three at the Japanese restaurant Nobu to induce doctors to prescribe its drugs. They said this led to the Medicare and Medicaid programs paying millions of dollars in reimbursements based on kickback-tainted claims for medication, such as hypertension drugs Lotrel and Valturna and the diabetes drug Starlix. The charges are detailed in a whistleblower lawsuit first filed against Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp by a former sales representative in January 2011 and which the US government has now joined.
INTERNET
LivingSocial data hacked
LivingSocial, the second-largest daily deal company behind Groupon Inc, said on Friday it was hit by a cyberattack that may have affected more than 50 million customers. The company said the attack on its computer systems resulted in unauthorized access to customer data, including names, e-mail addresses, date of birth for some users and “encrypted” passwords. LivingSocial stressed that customers’ credit card and merchants’ financial and banking information were not affected or accessed. It also does not store passwords in plain text.
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],”