GERMANY
Consumer confidence up
A survey has found that low unemployment and solid wage increases have helped push consumer confidence to a nearly six-year high. The GfK research institute said yesterday that its forward-looking consumer climate index rose to 6.8 points for next month from 6.5 this month. That is the highest level since a reading of 7.3 in September 2007. The unemployment rate was 6.8 percent last month, a contrast with rates above 20 percent in the European countries worst-hit by the debt crisis. Industrial workers and others in the country, which has Europe’s biggest economy, have secured wage raises well above the inflation rate this year.
SOUTH KOREA
Superfast network takes off
SK Telecom yesterday announced the launch of a new-generation mobile network that offers speeds twice that of its existing long-term evolution (LTE) network and 10 times that of 3G services. The new LTE-Advanced, which will be immediately available in Seoul and 40 other cities, will allow users to download an entire movie in about 40 seconds. The network was launched in conjunction with a new LTE-A capable version of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone, and SK Telecom said half a dozen other compatible smartphones were expected to be offered in the second half of this year.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford leads the pack in China
Ford Motor Co, the fastest-growing major foreign automaker in China this year, said its sales gain will outpace the industry this year as customers buy new models. “We don’t see the growth rate backing off for the rest of this year,” John Lawler, head of Ford in China, said yesterday in Shanghai, without giving figures. “We’re seeing great reception of our new vehicles.” Ford sales surged 48 percent in the first five months of the year in China, beating foreign peers including Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, on demand for the Focus compact and EcoSport and Kuga SUVs.
NEW ZEALAND
Mail carrier slashes jobs
New Zealand Post yesterday said it was slashing 120 jobs as its traditional mail services continue to decline by 8 percent a year in the face of alternatives such as e-mail and text messaging. The state-owned postal service said the jobs will go as part of a plan to halve the number of mail processing centers it operates from six to three. Chief executive Brian Roche said New Zealand Post was now carrying 200 million less items of mail a year than a decade ago and volumes were slipping at a rate of 8 percent annually.
ECONOMY
World bank to lend a hand
The head of the World Bank said on Tuesday that the global lender stands ready to help developing countries cope with a rise in interest rates as a result of the US Federal Reserve’s plan to scale back its stimulus program. “There’s a tremendous amount of concern about what could happen,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim told reporters after a talk on the bank’s goal of reducing extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030. “We just have to be ready to move and try even harder to make sure that capital is available for the kinds of infrastructure investments developing countries need,” Kim said, adding that interest rates have already risen in some developing countries.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is