AUTOMOTIVE
TomTom to sell Telematics
TomTom NV has agreed to sell its Telematics fleet management business to tire manufacturer Bridgestone Corp for 910 million euros (US$1.03 billion), freeing up resources to battle Silicon Valley giants, such as Alphabet Inc, for access to mapping technology in car dashboards. The sale marks a significant step in TomTom’s strategic shift to location technology as customers ditch the personal navigation devices that put the company on the map two decades ago in favor for ones built into smartphones. Bridgestone, the world’s largest tire maker, is speeding up product development for connected and smart cars, combining tires and sensors to collect road conditions and tire information such as the amount of wear. With the purchase, Bridgestone plans to gather data from 860,000 units of vehicles that use TomTom’s digital service to develop products and improve tire maintenance service, it said in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
AUTOMOTIVE
Toyota, Panasonic team up
Toyota Motor Corp yesterday announced that it is creating a joint venture with Panasonic Corp to develop batteries for electric cars, as the Japanese auto giant ramps up its ambitions for electric-powered vehicles. The firm is to be set up by next year and controlled 51-49 percent by Toyota, the Prius manufacturer said in a statement. “Toyota and Panasonic are confident that the contracts concluded today will further strengthen and accelerate their actions toward achieving competitive batteries,” the statement said. Toyota president Akio Toyoda has previously said he wants half of the firm’s global sales to come from electric-powered vehicles by 2030, up from about 15 percent now. “The key to electrifying vehicles in the future will be batteries. In order for Japan to survive this era of profound change with no natural resources, we must develop competitive batteries and establish systems for a stable supply,” Toyoda said.
INTERNET
Facebook hiring in Ireland
Facebook Inc is to expand its presence in Ireland with an additional 1,000 staff this year, the firm said on Monday, bolstering its largest base outside of California. Facebook employs 4,000 people across Ireland and in Dublin, where the company has established its international base. The jobs are to span the engineering, safety, legal, policy, marketing and sales teams, Facebook said in a statement. The employees would be working to “help keep people safe” and “prevent abuse” on the platform following a turbulent period, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said. Ireland has been singled out for luring multinationals, such as Facebook, to its territory by offering complex tax schemes that allow them to shift profits and avoid large bills.
AVIATION
Drones cost EasyJet millions
EasyJet lost £15 million (US$19.35 million) in the 36 hours of travel chaos sparked by drones flying into London’s Gatwick Airport last month, the budget airline said yesterday. The disruption affected 82,000 travelers and forced the cancelation of more than 400 of its flights in the run-up to Christmas, the British company said. That knocked about £5 million off its revenue and cost the airline £10 million to help its customers. However, the group gave an otherwise upbeat trading update and said that bookings are encouraging this year, despite uncertainty around Brexit.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”