UNITED STATES
Holiday spending surges
A payment technology firm says that holiday spending is surging in the days before Christmas. First Data on Friday said overall spending, excluding gas, rose 9.2 percent from Nov. 1 through Monday last week, outpacing the 3.7 percent pace for the period a year earlier. The company analyzes online and in-store payments for 1.3 million merchants. Cooler weather, rising consumer confidence and low unemployment are enticing shoppers to spend. The report comes as the US Department of Commerce on Friday released data showing that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, rose 0.6 percent last month after gaining 0.2 percent in October.
UNITED KINGDOM
Services bolster growth
The economy picked up speed in the third quarter thanks to a strong services sector, official data confirmed on Friday, ahead of years of expected weaker growth on gathering Brexit clouds. GDP grew 0.4 percent in the third quarter, up slightly from 0.3 percent in the April-to-June period, the Office for National Statistics said as it reiterated last month’s second estimate. However, the government had warned last month in its annual budget that the economy would grow much slower than expected over the next five years.
CANADA
Oil output dip stalls GDP
The economy unexpectedly stalled in October on a decline in oil output, a disappointing kickoff to the final quarter of this year. GDP was unchanged from September, Statistics Canada reported on Friday, weighed down by a 3.5 percent drop in production by oil sands companies. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had forecast a 0.2 percent gain for October. Economists forecast growth in the fourth quarter to pick up to an annualized 2.4 percent pace, from 1.7 percent in the third, and to expand by 2.2 percent next year.
INTERNET
Amazon purchases Blink
Blink on Friday put out the word that online retail goliath Amazon.com Inc has bought the start-up specializing in wireless home security cameras. “We’ll continue to operate under the Amazon umbrella,” Blink said in a blog post. “It’s Day 1 for us at Amazon, and we’re looking forward to seeing what we can deliver to our customers together.” The US start-up last week added a video doorbell priced at US$99 to its home security system offerings. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and Amazon did not reply to an AFP inquiry.
NORTH KOREA
Sanctions slow Chinese trade
China’s trade with North Korea last month edged up to US$388 million, but remained at about its lowest levels this year, data showed yesterday, as tough sanctions continue to slow business with its isolated neighbor. The total is up 15.9 percent from October’s US$334.89 million, but far lower than US$613.2 million a year ago, according to data released by China’s General Administration of Customs. While the data shows a monthly pickup, China’s trade with North Korea has been slowing since the latest UN penalties came into force on Sept. 5, banning Pyongyang from selling coal, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood abroad.
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
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
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],”
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