INVESTMENT
Water for the fire monkey
CLSA’s Feng Shui Index has some recommendations for the Lunar New Year, saying that Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is destined for a bumpy ride, but there is enough water to withstand the fire monkey. By the end of the year, things would look a bit better. CLSA expects auto-related stocks, machinery and financials to do well in the beginning of the lunar year, but advises caution over “water” industries — gaming and transport. From November, it recommends avoiding telecommunications, technology, utilities and oil.
SMARTPHONES
Apple to trade in phones
Apple Inc for the first time is accepting banged up iPhones as a trade in from those wanting to upgrade. The company said it hopes that with more leeway, applicable only to iPhone 5 and later models, more people would upgrade to new iPhones. Apple pays up to US$350 for phones without cracked screens or broken buttons. The changes, first reported on the tech blog 9to5Mac, were confirmed on Friday by Apple spokesman Nick Leahy.
ELECTRONICS
GoPro inks Microsoft deal
GoPro Inc on Friday said it signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft Corp in a move to convince investors it is making progress on improving software editing capabilities for its action cameras. Terms were not disclosed for the deal that involves patent sharing for file storage. “This agreement with GoPro shows the incredible breadth of technology sharing enabled through patent transactions,” Microsoft Technology Licensing president Nick Psyhogeos said.
UNITED STATES
Trade deficit grows
The trade deficit grew modestly last year as exports declined amid a slowing international economy. For all of last year, the trade gap in goods and services widened 4.6 percent from a year earlier to US$531.5 billion, as the fall in exports outpaced the decline in imports, the Commerce Department said on Friday. In evidence of the weakness in international trade, US both exports and imports declined since 2014.
BRAZIL
Inflation at a 12-year high
Inflation rate rose to a 12-year high last month, officials said on Friday, as the world’s seventh-largest economy continued to struggle through a protracted recession. Driven by rising food prices, the annual inflation rate hit 10.71 percent, the highest since November 2003 and well beyond the central bank’s target ceiling of 6.5 percent, national statistics institute IBGE said. Meanwhile, the monthly inflation rate was 1.27 percent, the highest January figure since 2003.
PORTUGAL
Tax increases revised
The government on Friday said it is to increase indirect taxes more than planned earlier and cut the growth outlook presented two weeks earlier. The government lowered this year’s economic growth forecast to 1.8 percent from the 2.1 percent announced on Jan. 21, when it presented an initial draft of the budget. Total tax revenue is to represent about 25 percent of GDP this year, little changed from last year, and the government would increase taxes on fuel, cars and banks, according to this year’s budget proposal.
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