INDIA
Inflation accelerating
Inflation accelerated more than economists estimated last month, adding pressure on central bank Governor Raghuram Rajan to raise interest rates again. The wholesale price index advanced 7 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 6.46 percent climb in September, the Commerce Ministry said in a report yesterday. The median of 40 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was 6.95 percent. August inflation was revised to 6.99 percent from 6.10 percent, the report showed.
SOUTH KOREA
Bank keeps rates unchanged
The central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 2.5 percent yesterday for the sixth straight month as the economy shows moderate recovery and inflation remains under control. The Bank of Korea forecast a steady pickup in the coming months thanks to easing conditions at home and abroad, but it said there remained downside risks, including uncertainty over the US stimulus program and another possible budget standoff in Washington. Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo said economic growth was likely to come close to its full potential in the second half of next year.
GERMANY
Economic growth slows
Growth of the economy, Europe’s biggest, slowed to 0.3 percent in the third quarter on sluggish exports, official data showed yesterday. GDP expanded by 0.3 percent in the period from July to September, slower than the 0.7 percent recorded in the preceding three months, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement. The statisticians said private household and public spending were somewhat higher than in the preceding quarter, while investment in equipment and construction also increased compared with the second quarter.
ELECTRONICS
Apple demands US$380m
Apple Inc is demanding that Samsung Electronics Co pay it US$380 million for copying vital iPhone and iPad features. An Apple attorney made the demand on Wednesday during opening statements of a Silicon Valley patent trial. A previous jury already has concluded that 26 Samsung products copied Apple’s scrolling function, iPhone design and other features. That jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple US$1.05 billion.
AEROSPACE
EADS profit jumps 45%
European giant EADS yesterday said its third quarter net profit jumped by 45 percent to 436 million euros (US$587 million) as it revised upward its estimate of Airbus orders for the year. Net profit for the first nine months this year rose by 36 percent to 1.2 billion euros, EADS said in a statement. The company expects gross commercial aircraft orders for this year to reach more than 1,200 aircraft, but EADS chief executive Tom Enders said that “significant challenges” lie ahead with respect to cash generation and the A350 XWB wide-body jetliner.
FASHION
Burberry revenue soars
British group Burberry said yesterday that first-half net profits soared by a third, as revenues raced past £1 billion (US$1.6 billion) for the first time. Earnings after taxation jumped to £112.7 million in the six months to Sept. 30, compared with the same part of its previous financial year, Burberry said in a results statement. The company added that revenue jumped 17 percent to £1.03 billion in the period on keen global demand for its luxury clothing and accessories.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts