China in recent days has busted a slew of smugglers bringing Apple Inc’s new iPhone 6 models into the country ahead of their official release date, with officials yesterday reporting the latest seizure of 453 smartphones in Shanghai.
Hundreds more were seized during three separate busts from Thursday through Saturday in Hong Kong, including from men with a speedboat who were loading contraband onto a wooden sampan-style boat in a mangrove, Xinhua news agency said.
The most recent seizure was from the luggage of two passengers arriving at the Shanghai airport from Tokyo, one of them Chinese and the other Japanese, a woman at the Shanghai customs agency said, confirming state media reports.
She said hundreds more have been confiscated individually from passengers who did not declare them.
Apple delayed its original plans to introduce the iPhone 6 in China this month, but did not comment on reports that it still had not received Chinese regulatory approval.
The already-thriving black market for the phones in China, where Apple competes with less-expensive alternatives from local powerhouse Xiaomi Corp (小米), as well as Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) and Samsung Electronics Co, has drawn a rebuke in Chinese state media.
As Apple is yet to set a launch in China, the iPhone 6 models were reportedly being sold for between US$1,500 and US$3,000.
The Global Times said in an editorial on Friday that the frenzy over the iPhone 6 — including a scuffle among Chinese lining up at an Apple store in the US — was making China “lose face.”
It said iPhones apparently were hip, but that consumers should not buy into their marketing hype.
“Please show that you despise those who already have the iPhone 6,” the editorial read.
Apple became a target of state media critiques in March last year over alleged unfairness when it was reported that, under its warranty policy, it was fixing internal components of faulty iPhones in China while elsewhere it was replacing the entire phone.
Apple later clarified that it would be replacing all handsets in China and apologized about the issues.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six