Baidu Inc (百度) might introduce an autonomous car this year, as the owner of China’s largest Internet search engine joins companies from Google Inc to Apple Inc in developing connected vehicles.
Baidu has been researching the smart car and is working with auto manufacturers, chief executive Robin Li (李彥宏) said yesterday in Beijing, where he is attending meetings of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body.
Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei (苗圩) last week said that he would encourage firms outside the traditional auto industry to tie up with existing manufacturers to spur innovation and competition.
“Marrying traditional and the cutting edge can speed up the evolution of the auto industry,” CSC International Holdings (群益國際控股) analyst Han Weiqi (韓偉琪) said in Shanghai. “IT companies have an edge in areas like big data, cloud technology and Internet of Things, where traditional automakers are weak.”
Among other Chinese companies, Leshi Internet Information and Technology (Beijing) Co (樂視網信息技術北京有限公司), a maker of Web-enabled TVs, has said it would invest billions of dollars into developing a connected electric car.
Li also said Baidu would debut lending applications “very soon.”
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained