Samsung Electronics Co warned of rising competition across businesses from smartphones to memory chips, again sounding a dour note for the global technology industry this year.
The world’s largest smartphone vendor faces another difficult year after last year was plagued by economic turbulence and volatile exchange rates, CEO Kwon Oh-hyun said in a letter to shareholders ahead of their annual meeting yesterday.
At the gathering, Samsung formally adopted a proposal to allow non-CEOs to take up the chairman’s role for the first time, a move that signals efforts to improve governance.
The pool of candidates now encompasses qualified executives as well as independent board directors, Samsung spokeswoman Kelly Yeo said.
South Korea’s largest conglomerate is in part reacting to criticism after the sale of a subsidiary to another unit, in a controversial deal last year that helped cement the Lee family’s control of the empire.
More immediately, Samsung Electronics — the maker of Galaxy smartphones and the group’s crown jewel — is fighting to protect its market share from Apple Inc and Chinese rivals like Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and grappling with declining semiconductor and consumer electronics prices.
“We expect core products of our company, such as smartphone, TV and memory, will face oversupply issues and intensified price competition,” Kwon said in his annual letter. “We expect that 2016 will also be a tough year.”
Samsung Electronics in January reported a quarterly profit that fell short of expectations by almost 40 percent and said it expects slowing demand for smartphones and more global economic headwinds this year.
The company is investing in new technologies, such as foldable mobile displays, to try and boost profit.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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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
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