SMARTPHONES
Samsung to replace devices
Samsung Electronics Co’s Taiwan branch on Friday said Taiwanese consumers can have their Galaxy Note 7 smartphones replaced unconditionally starting in the middle of this month, after the South Korean company announced a global recall of its latest series of smartphones due to a battery problem. Samsung Taiwan said it will announce where people can have their phones replaced at a later date. The company said that replacements will be limited to officially distributed devices in Taiwan and that people must provide the complete package and proof of purchase to receive new devices. Those who do not have receipts must show their IDs, it added. The replacement process is expected to run through Dec. 31, it said.
UNITED STATES
Trade gap narrows
A pickup in exports, especially autos, electronics and soybeans, helped narrow the trade gap in July, the Department of Commerce reported on Friday. The trade deficit for the month fell to US$39.5 billion, compared with US$44.7 billion in June and US$39.9 billion a year ago. Total exports in July rose by US$3.4 billion to US$186.3 billion, and imports fell by US$1.8 billion to US$225.8 billion. That took the deficit for the first seven months of this year to US$289 billion.
CANADA
Vancouver home sales fall
Vancouver home sales fell 26 percent last month from a year earlier and prices slid as the government’s moves to cool the market by taxing foreign buyers crimped demand. Sales also dropped from July, down 23 percent to 2,489 transactions, according to a statement from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. The average price of a detached property declined 17 percent on the month, and 0.6 percent on the year, to C$1.47 million (US$1.13 million) last month, the lowest price since September last year.
GREECE
TV licenses auctioned off
The nation on Friday raised 246 million euros (US$274 million) by auctioning four private TV licenses in a marathon bid dominated by shipowners, including the boss of the country’s top football club. “For the first time in the history of the land ... rules are applied in the use of broadcasting frequencies,” government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili said. State minister Nikos Pappas said the nearly three-day auction will set a milestone “in attracting funds to maximize each price in favor of the Greek taxpayer.” The four 10-year licenses were won by three shipowners and a constructor, the government said.
TECHNOLOGY
HPE to sell division
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) is looking to sell its software division, perhaps for as much as US$10 billion, according to media reports on Friday that cited sources close to the matter. The move would include HPE shedding the operations of Autonomy Corp, a British software firm bought five years ago in a US$11 billion deal that has since been branded a business blunder. The Wall Street Journal reported that HPE was seeking from US$8 billion to US$10 billion for its software operations. The Financial Times said a number of private equity funds are interested in the HPE unit.
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