ELECTRONICS
Samsung factory robbed
Authorities say a group of bandits raided a Samsung Electronics factory in Brazil and made off with about US$36 million worth of cellphones and computers. Sao Paulo Police Lieutenant Vitor Chaves told the Globo television network that the gang captured several plant employees and stole their ID tags. The group then overpowered security guards and spent about three hours in the plant, trucking out the electronics early Monday. Investigators are looking at security video supplied by the South Korean company. The factory is in Campinas, north of Sao Paulo.
RETAIL
Carrefour to exit India
French retail giant Carrefour SA said on Monday that it would pull out of the Indian market with the closure of its five wholesale “cash & carry” stores by the end of September. Press reports have linked the move to the general election victory in May by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said to oppose opening up the huge Indian retail market to foreign distributors. Carrefour chief executive George Plassat had already indicated that the group had been considering whether to maintain a presence in India, where its first store opened in 2010.
AUTOMAKERS
GM outlines Argentina plan
General Motors Co (GM) is to invest US$740 million in Argentina through 2016 on its first South American factory turning out aluminum motors, Buenos Aires said on Monday. The new unit is to be installed in the GM complex in Rosario, an agro-industrial port city about 300km northwest of the capital, according to the office of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. Production at the new factory is to start in 2017 and aims to reach 140,000 motors a year.
TRADE
Japan posts fourth surplus
Japan recorded a current account surplus for the fourth straight month in May, government data showed yesterday, as the country’s trade shortfall narrowed. The surplus of ¥522.8 billion (US$5.1 billion) was down 7.7 percent from the same month a year ago, but the rate of decline was much smaller than a 76.1 percent drop in April. The latest current account figure was influenced by a drop in the country’s trade deficit as imports fell for the first time in 19 months.
TRADE
German surplus widens
Germany’s trade surplus widened in May, as imports fell faster than exports, official data showed yesterday. In seasonally adjusted terms, Germany exported goods worth a total of 92.8 billion euros (US$126 billion) in May, down 1.1 percent from the figure for April, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement. Imports dropped by 3.4 percent to 74.1 billion euros. That meant the seasonally adjusted trade surplus increased to 18.8 billion euros in May from 17.2 billion euros in April.
CHIPMAKERS
Panasonic, Intel team up
Intel Corp said it signed up Panasonic Corp as a customer in its biggest win so far for its chip-production effort. Panasonic’s chip division is to use Intel to make system-on-chip products on the US company’s 14-nanometer technology, which is the most recent type of manufacturing process for semiconductors, Intel said in a statement on Monday. Intel is to make chips for audiovisual equipment for the Japanese company, the statement said. Intel has signed five other customers, including Altera Corp, the company said.
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
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],”
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
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