E-COMMERCE
Singles’ Day growth slows
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) filled a record US$30.7 billion in orders on Sunday during its annual Singles’ Day shopping frenzy, but growth slowed from previous years. The world’s biggest 24-hour shopping event, celebrating its 10th year, started early on Sunday and once again shattered its own sales mark as Chinese online shoppers seized on promotions to snap up everything from electronics to clothing and housewares. Sales rose 27 percent, compared with 39 percent last year. Alibaba’s share price, which doubled last year, is down 16 percent this year.
TECHNOLOGY
SAP to buy Qualtrics
SAP SE, Europe’s biggest technology company, on Sunday said it has agreed to pay US$8 billion cash for survey-software provider Qualtrics International Inc, which was preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). The deal was approved by boards of both companies and Qualtrics shareholders, SAP said. The sale is expected to close in the first half of next year. Prove, Utah-based Qualtrics filed for an IPO last week. Its products help companies get feedback from employees and customers. Qualtrics said in a regulatory filing that it has more than 9,000 customers including more than 75 percent of Fortune 100 companies.
DISTILLERS
Diageo to sell 17 brands
Diageo PLC has agreed to sell Seagram’s VO whiskey, Parrot Bay coconut liqueur and another 17 brands to closely held US distiller Sazerac Co for US$550 million. The proceeds from the sale, about £340 million (US$438 million) after tax and transaction costs, would be returned to shareholders through a share repurchase program, the London-based company said in a statement yesterday. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to complete early next year. The transaction is expected to generate an exceptional gain on disposal of approximately £110 million, the company said.
TELECOMS
Italian firm mulls new chief
Telecom Italia SpA’s board of directors might seek the resignation of chief executive officer Amos Genish as early as this week, newspaper Il Messaggero reported without saying where it got the information. Directors backed by both Vivendi SA, the carrier’s biggest shareholder, and US activist Elliott Management Corp, have agreed to call an extraordinary board meeting to obtain Genish’s resignation, according to the newspaper. Telecom Italia chairman Fulvio Conti is considering Rocco Sabelli and Alfredo Altavilla as possible successors, Messaggero reported.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung to unveil new phone
Samsung Electronics Co is to roll out its foldable smartphone in the first half of next year and produce at least 1 million of them, Yonhap News reported. DJ Koh, president of Samsung’s mobile communication business, told reporters after a conference in San Francisco that he would launch the device in the first half “no matter what,” Yonhap reported on Sunday. A new version of the foldable phone is to be unveiled every year like Samsung’s flagship phones, such as the Galaxy S9. The company might raise the production volume of its foldable devices depending on market reception, Koh was quoted as saying. Samsung shipped more than 300 million phones in total last year, according to TrendForce Corp (集邦科技), a Taipei-based market research firm.
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