SWITZERLAND
Watch exports in free fall
The country’s watch exports last month fell for a 14th consecutive month as demand weakened from Japan to the US. Shipments dropped 8.8 percent to 1.4 billion Swiss francs (US$1.4 billion), the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry said in a statement yesterday. The slump has spread from Asia to markets in Europe and the US, leading Swatch Group AG to report a 54 percent drop in first-half profit and peer Cie Financiere Richemont SA to warn that first-half earnings would decline about 45 percent. Exports to Hong Kong fell 29 percent, while shipments to Germany slid 15 percent, the federation said. The US and Japan showed declines of 12 percent and 27 percent, respectively. One bright spot was the UK, where Swiss watch exports increased 24 percent after the Brexit-induced tumble in the value of sterling.
FOOD
Kellogg recalling waffles
Kellogg Co is recalling about 10,000 cases of its Eggo Nutri-Grain Whole Wheat Waffles in 25 US states, because they could be contaminated with the bacteria listeria. Listeria can cause serious and even deadly infections. It primarily affects elderly people, pregnant women, newborns and people with weak immune systems. The Battle Creek, Michigan company on Monday said it has received no reports of illnesses. Kellogg says it learned of the potential problem after routine tests. Kellogg, which also makes Frosted Flakes and Special K, said no other Eggo products were affected.
SMARTPHONES
China Note 7 fire probed
Samsung Electronics on Monday said that its investigation into the first report of a Galaxy Note 7 fire in China found no battery problem, reducing concerns that its smartphone crisis had expanded to the world’s largest mobile phone market. The South Korean tech giant said it was not able to investigate a second reported fire because it could not obtain that phone. The two accounts of Galaxy Note 7 fires appeared on Chinese social media and were widely reported by Chinese and South Korean media, raising alarms, because the South Korean tech giant earlier said no Note 7 recall was necessary in China because the phones sold there did not have the battery manufacturing error that caused fires in dozens of phones sold in other countries. Samsung announced the global recall of 2.5 million of its flagship smartphones just two weeks after they were launched.
EU
Apple ruling ‘not anti-US’
Europe’s powerful Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Monday said that the EU order for Apple to pay US$15 billion in taxes did not represent any bias against US companies. Speaking hours after the EU launched an in-depth probe into alleged sweetheart tax deals between French gas group Engie and Luxembourg, Vestager said the new case was evidence that the EU was going after all tax evaders. “If you look at our practice, then you cannot find a US bias. You cannot find the statistics to back up any kind of bias,” she said in Washington. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, last month ordered Apple to reimburse a record 13 billion euros (US$15 billion) in unpaid taxes in Ireland. That came after US companies, including Starbucks, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet, have come under probes over the low profits tax they pay in Europe due to alleged sweetheart tax deals with certain governments.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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