OIL
Saudi Arabian output down
Saudi Arabia continued to lead OPEC’s efforts to cut production, helping the organization get closer to a goal set out in a historic accord last year. Riyadh lowered oil supply by 90,000 barrels a day from a month earlier to 9.78 million last month, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts, oil companies and ship-tracking data. It was the second month in a row that the world’s biggest crude exporter pumped below its own target of 10.06 million barrels a day. Overall, the OPEC’s production fell to 32.17 million barrels a day last month, a 65,000 barrel-a-day drop from January, the first month of the accord.
AVIATION
Boeing cutting Seattle jobs
Boeing Co is shrinking its Seattle-area workforce by at least 1,800 jobs this year as it streamlines operations in a brutally competitive commercial-aircraft market. The planemaker approved voluntary layoffs for 1,500 mechanics, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because it has not been made public. Another 305 engineers and technical workers are leaving voluntarily, Bill Dugovich, a spokesman for their union, said on Thursday.
COSTCO
Membership fees rising
Costco Wholesale Corp on Thursday said that it is raising its North America membership fees, as the warehouse club operator released quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Its shares fell more than 4 percent in after-hours trading. Starting June 1, annual membership fees for individual, business and business add-on members in the US and Canada will rise US$5 to US$60. Executive memberships in those two nations will increase from US$110 to US$120. The fee increases will affect about 35 million members. The Issaquah, Washington-based company reported fiscal second-quarter net income of US$515 million, or US$1.17 per share. Costco posted revenue of US$29.77 billion in the period, which also did not meet Street forecasts.
INTERNET
Typo causes Amazon outage
Amazon.com Inc says an incorrectly typed command during a routine debugging of its billing system caused the five-hour outage of some Amazon Web Services servers on Tuesday. In a summary posted online, the Seattle company says a command meant to remove a small number of servers for one of its S3 subsystems was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed. A full restart was required, which took longer than expected due to how fast Amazon Web Services has grown over the past few years. Amazon says it is making changes to its system to make sure incorrect commands would not trigger an outage of its Web services in the future.
ENTERTAINMENT
Spotify hits 50 million mark
Spotify Ltd on Thursday said it has reached 50 million paid subscribers, growing 25 percent in less than six months and extending the Swedish music streaming service’s lead over its closest rival, Apple Music. Spotify, which has not yet shown a profit as it spends to grow internationally, is considering a potential US stock market listing, according to a February TechCrunch report. The Stockholm-based company said in February that it would move its New York office to the World Trade Center from the Midtown area of Manhattan, adding more than 1,000 new jobs. Launched in 2008, Spotify had 40 million paid subscribers in September last year.
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