SEMICONDUCTORS
TI income fell 20% in Q3
Chipmaker Texas Instruments Inc (TI) said on Monday that its net income fell 20 percent in the third quarter. Its outlook for the current period was worse than analysts expected. TI expects earnings per share of US$0.42 to US$0.50 in the last three months of the year, below the US$0.51 that analysts polled by FactSet predicted. It expects revenue of US$2.86 billion to US$3.1 billion, also below the US$3.11 billion analysts forecast. Net income in the third quarter came in at US$629 million, or US$0.56 per share, from US$784 million, or US$0.67 per share, in the same period a year ago. That beat analysts’ estimate of US$0.53 per share. Revenue fell 4 percent to US$3.24 billion because of declines in its legacy wireless business, which shrank to less than 2 percent of revenue in the third quarter.
TELECOMS
China Mobile profit slips
China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers, said its latest quarterly profit tumbled 8.7 percent due to tougher competition. The company said profit in the three months ended Sept. 30 was 28.4 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion), down from 31.1 billion yuan a year earlier. The company said in a statement that it “experienced severe difficulties and challenges arising from increasingly complex competition.”
SHIPBUILDING
Japan firms invest in Brazil
A Japanese consortium yesterday said it would buy a 30 percent stake in a Brazilian shipbuilder, as it eyes the lucrative market for resource-exploration vessels. The deal, reportedly worth about ¥30 billion (US$305 million), would see five firms, including Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, invest in Brazil’s Ecovix-Engevix Construcoes Oceanicas S/A, which has more than 5,000 employees. No financial details were released yesterday, but business daily Nikkei Shimbun has reported that the investment would be worth as much as ¥30 billion.
CURRENCY
Singapore, China ink pact
Singapore and China will introduce direct trading between their currencies, helping the city-state cement its status as Southeast Asia’s yuan hub. The two nations also agreed on a 50 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) quota for financial institutions in Singapore to invest in China’s domestic securities under the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement yesterday. The city-state will be one of several locations where Chinese institutional investors will be able to buy securities overseas with yuan under the new program, the statement said.
INTERNET
Yahoo beats Google in traffic
For the third month in a row, more Americans visited Yahoo’s Web sites than Google’s, according to comScore Inc’s Internet traffic data for last month. The research firm said on Monday that Yahoo Inc’s Web sites had 197.8 million unique US visitors last month, while Google Inc’s had 191.4 million. Yahoo was also ahead of Google in July and August. The last time that Yahoo was ahead of Google before that was in May 2011. That said, Yahoo is still far behind Google in making money from the people who visit its Web sites. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Google will generate US$38.83 billion in worldwide digital ad revenue this year, more than any other firm. Facebook Inc is at No. 2 with an estimated US$5.89 billion, while Yahoo is No. 3 with US$3.63 billion expected.
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],”