CHINA
US firms in anti-trust probes
Beijing yesterday said it has been investigating two US companies — including chipmaker Qualcomm — since last year over potential anti-trust violations. The confirmation by the National Development and Reform Commission, one of the country’s three anti-trust watchdogs, came after both companies had already acknowledged the investigations. Commission official Xu Kunlin (許昆林) discussed the probes yesterday at a press conference, saying they were launched after separate complaints by unnamed industry players in the country that the US companies were abusing their market dominance to charge high prices.
IMMIGRATION
Swiss curbs risky: Moody’s
Ratings agency Moody’s warned on Tuesday that immigration curbs in Switzerland would hit the economy and the country’s key banking sector, after voters narrowly backed proposals to curtail immigration from the EU in a referendum on Feb. 9. “The introduction of quotas on labor immigration could reduce housing demand, thereby exerting pressure on residential house prices, and potentially leading to a faster-than-anticipated slowdown in residential housing markets,” Moody’s said. “In addition, negative repercussions on Swiss-EU trade may put pressure on export-oriented businesses, thereby leading to weaker corporate asset quality.”
INVESTMENTS
Hockey urges asset sales
State governments that sell assets such as airports and utilities as part of a national policy to rekindle economic growth will get new tax arrangements to offset lost revenue, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said yesterday. Hockey wants to reinvest the money from asset sales into new national infrastructure that he hopes will fill the investment void left by the slowing mining industry. The government hopes sales of state firms will raise as much as A$130 billion (US$117 billion), but the policy would also result in some lost revenue for states by putting the businesses in private hands.
GAMING
Sony sells 5.4 million PS4s
Sony on Monday appeared to be winning the latest battle in a long-running video game console war. The Japanese giant announced that it has sold more than 5.4 million PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles since the new-generation gaming system debuted in November. Microsoft said it sold 1 million Xbox One consoles in the day after its release and that figure reportedly tripled by the start of this year. It has not released its latest Xbox One sales.
SERVICES
NASDAQ opens center
NASDAQ has opened a customer service center in the Philippines in a coup for the country’s rapidly growing outsourcing industry. The operator of the namesake US stock exchange yesterday said the office will be part of its efforts to provide 24-hour support services for its corporate clients. It says the Manila office has 170 staff.
BEVERAGES
Coca-Cola Q4 sales fall
Coca-Cola’s fourth-quarter profit fell as the world’s biggest beverage maker once again sold less soft drinks in North America. For the three months ended Dec. 31, Coca-Cola earned US$1.71 billion, or US0.38 per share, on revenue of US$11.04 billion. The maker of Sprite, Dasani and Vitaminwater water said on Tuesday that sales volume declined 1 percent in North America. It also saw slower growth in emerging markets, such as India and China.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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