Leaders of Apple Inc, Google and other US technology giants are heading to China this weekend to pursue a familiar goal: to do more business in the world’s most populous country. Such efforts have had mixed results in the past.
With a trade war brewing between the world’s two largest economies, the goal has gotten loftier still.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and IBM Corp chairwoman and CEO Ginny Rometty are scheduled to attend the China Development Forum, an annual gathering that helps Western corporations build relationships with Chinese government officials.
Cook is cochairing the event this year and Apple has the most at stake in China among US tech companies. Its iPhones and other gadgets have sold well in China, but revenue from the region fell in Apple’s last fiscal year. The Cupertino, California-based company has also been criticized for relocating the data of Chinese iCloud users to Chinese state-controlled server farms.
At last year’s forum, IBM announced a deal with Chinese company Wanda Group (萬達集團). The deal was meant to help IBM expand in the Chinese cloud market, although Caixin has reported that Wanda would stop working with IBM.
Google pulled out of China in 2010 over government censorship of its search results. The company has been trying to return over the past few years, but has made little progress.
These hurdles would only get higher if a trade war were to erupt between the US and China. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump ordered 25 percent tariffs on at least US$50 billion of Chinese imports, including information and communication technology. He also accused China of stealing intellectual property. China responded with its own duties on some US imports.
Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf is to attend the conference, but has canceled his plan to speak.
The conference comes just days after Bloomberg News reported that Chinese regulators are seeking more protections for local companies before approving Qualcomm’s proposed purchase of NXP Semiconductors NV.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce is not satisfied with the remedies that Qualcomm has offered so far and has told the company to propose more, people familiar with the matter have said.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained