TECHNOLOGY
Office ready for iPhones
Microsoft on Friday made Office available on iPhones for people who pay to use the popular productivity software as a service in the Internet cloud. A free Office Mobile application for iPhones hit the shelves of Apple’s App Store, but can only be used with subscriptions to Office 365 Home Premium or Office 365 ProPlus. Subscriptions to Office 365 cost US$100 a year and allow the suite of programs for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other tasks to be used on as many as five devices — in a nod to modern, multi-gadget lifestyles. Documents or other files created using Office programs can be saved at Microsoft’s online SkyDrive.
COMPANIES
Wal-Mart could sell Vips
US supermarket chain Wal-Mart announced on Friday that it was weighing whether to sell its restaurant unit in Mexico, one of the country’s largest. Vips is a leading restaurant chain in Mexico, with 364 locations drawing 79 million customers a year. The division of Walmex, which is controlled by Wal-Mart stores, includes El Porton, Ragazzi and La Finca restaurants. Walmex said it “has begun a process to consider potential offers from third parties interested in acquiring its restaurant division Vips.” Vips has only just been put on the market and “it cannot be guaranteed that the sale will be carried through,” the company added in a statement. It said the restaurant unit accounted for 1.7 percent of Walmex’s consolidated sales and 1.6 percent of its net earnings last year.
BANKING
Swiss ‘should share data’
Switzerland should be ready to share data on foreign depositors with the EU even before a global standard is established, a government panel said on Friday, a move which would lift the last vestige of its tradition of banking secrecy. The world’s biggest offshore financial center, with US$2 trillion in assets, is under massive pressure from the EU and elsewhere, as cash-strapped states seek to stop tax evasion and close loopholes. Switzerland has recently come under increased pressure to fall into line with the EU after Austria and Luxembourg said they were prepared to share data on foreign depositors, but Swiss politicians remain deeply divided on the issue.
UNITED KINGDOM
Cameron to press tax havens
British Prime Minister David Cameron is to press the country’s overseas tax havens to sign up to an international transparency treaty in London on Saturday next week, before he meets leaders of G8 economies to push for coordinated global action on tax avoidance and evasion. He will ask 10 territories and self-governing regions, among the world’s top tax havens, to sign the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters — an initiative led by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a government statement released before next week’s talks said. Bermuda, one of Britain’s territories, said on Thursday it had agreed to back the treaty, which is signed by more than 50 countries and requires them to share information on individuals who hold bank accounts in their jurisdictions. Cameron is also seeking agreement from the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six