AUTOMAKERS
US sales plummet
Automotive sales in the US slowed significantly last month, compounding several months of declines and suggesting the industry’s record sales streak might be behind it. The big three US automakers on Tuesday all reported that sales fell last month compared with the same period last year. Industrywide, automakers sold 8.3 percent fewer cars last month compared with March, and 4.7 percent fewer year-on-year, according to Autodata. It was the fourth consecutive month of falling sales for the industry. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales fell to 16.88 million units, from 17.4 million in the same period last year when automotive sales were headed for another record year, according to Autodata.
AUTOMAKERS
VW’s Q1 profit surges 44%
Volkswagen AG (VW) said its first-quarter profit surged 44 percent as the company continued to work past a scandal over its diesel cars that were rigged to cheat on emissions tests. Costs and fines from the scandal that emerged in September 2015 have been a drain on VW’s large cash pile since, but the firm’s chief financial officer yesterday said that the company was solid enough to handle added costs this year. VW also reaffirmed its profit goal for the full year. After-tax profit rose to 3.4 billion euros (US$3.71 billion), up from 2.4 billion euros in the same period last year. The results beat analyst estimates of 3.1 billion euros, compiled by financial information provider FactSet.
BANKING
BNP says Q1 results ‘solid’
French bank BNP Paribas SA yesterday said it got off to a good start this year, notching up “solid” results in the first quarter on the strength of the financial market. The company said in a statement its net profit rose by 4.4 percent to 1.89 billion euros in the January-to-March period, beating analysts’ expectations of a figure of about 1.6 billion euros. Revenues advanced by 4.2 percent to 11.3 billion euros, also outpacing expectations.
TECHNOLOGY
Microsoft bets on students
Microsoft Corp is taking aim at Google as it introduces a Surface device for students and a slimmed down Windows for the classroom. The new Surface Laptop is the first Surface device without a detachable keyboard. Microsoft said the new laptop has up to 14.5 hours of battery life, compared with 12 hours for Apple Inc’s MacBook Air. The Surface Laptop is to come out on June 15. The laptop runs Windows 10 S, a streamlined version of the ubiquitous operating system. Microsoft said new education PCs running Windows 10 S would start at US$189, a little more expensive than the cheapest Chromebooks. The Surface Laptop is to start at US$999, the same as the MacBook Air.
LAWSUIT
Malaysian sues over airbag
A Malaysian man has sued Honda Motor Co and Takata Corp for wrongful death after his wife was killed in a car accident that left shrapnel from a defective airbag part lodged in her skull. Nida Fatin Mat Asis, a 29-year-old doctor, was driving the Honda City that crashed in Malaysia’s eastern Sabah State on April 16 last year. An autopsy found shrapnel from a Takata airbag inflator in the base of her skull. The lawsuit was filed in a US District court in Michigan on Monday.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts