TECHNOLOGY
Philips to meet targets
Royal Philips NV said a strong order book and resilient performance in markets including China and India would allow the Dutch healthcare equipment provider meet sales targets, even as uncertainty surrounding US policy led hospitals there to delay spending. The company reiterated a full-year revenue growth target of between 4 and 6 percent for its health technology businesses, which excludes the Philips Lighting NV unit that was spun off last year. This year’s first-quarter sales on the same basis rose 3 percent, meaning the Amsterdam-based company needs “to do more” in the second half, chief executive officer Frans van Houten said. “We saw a strong order intake growth in China, India and Europe. That compensates then for the somewhat slower US market,” he said on a call with journalists yesterday, when the firm posted a seven-fold leap in first-quarter profits after spinning off its lighting business. Net profit soared to 259 million euros (US$281 million) in the first three months of this year, compared with 37 million euros in the same period last year.
LOGISTICS
DHL to invest in India
Deutsche Post DHL Group is to invest 250 million euros in India by 2020 to expand its logistics business and tap demand as the nation introduces a national sales tax that is set to boost movement of freight. The goods and services tax will help create bigger distribution centers, Deutsche Post AG chief executive officer Frank Appel said in an interview in Mumbai on Friday. Until now, Indian companies were setting up warehouses in all states to avoid tax burden while the new tax reform might realign the needs of local companies toward larger and fewer mother warehouses, he said.
SMARTPHONES
Galaxy S8 gets color update
Samsung Electronics Co will this week offer an unusually early software update for its newly released Galaxy S8 smartphone, it said yesterday after some users complained of red-tinted screens. The Galaxy S8 started over-the-counter sales in the US and its home market, but South Korean users who pre-ordered the smartphones complained their screens displayed an unusually reddish hue. Online images of their smartphones went viral on social media, but Samsung denied a hardware flaw and maintained that users could manually adjust the color range according to their preferences. Samsung yesterday said that a software update would fix the problem by allowing them to readjust colors over a wider range than at present.
REAL ESTATE
London house prices decline
London house prices this month posted their largest annual drop in almost eight years as buyers shunned the capital’s central areas. The average asking price in the city fell 1.5 percent to £636,777 (US$813,000) this month from a year earlier, the largest annual decline since May 2009, property Web site Rightmove PLC said yesterday. On the month, London asking prices decreased 2 percent. London’s housing market has underperformed the rest of the UK since the start of last year after demand was hit by unaffordable valuations, the Brexit vote and tax increases on investors. More expensive homes are suffering the most as London’s inner areas posted a 4.2 percent annual decline, while prices in its cheaper outer suburbs were up 1.7 percent.
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last