AUTO INDUSTRY
India car sales drop further
India’s domestic passenger vehicle sales fell for the ninth straight month last month, an auto industry body said yesterday, amid a deepening crisis in the nation’s automobile sector that has triggered large-scale job losses. Sales of passenger vehicles to auto dealers fell 30.9 percent to 200,790, data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) showed. Commercial vehicles sales dropped 25.7 percent to 56,866 units, SIAM said. Motorcycle and scooters sales declined 16.8 percent to about 1.51 million units, while passenger car sales fell 36 percent to 122,956 units, the data showed.
BEVERAGES
Diageo to sell Cuban rum
A subsidiary of British drinks giant Diageo PLC on Monday announced a joint venture with Havana’s state distiller to market and distribute Cuban rum, defying US efforts to block foreign investment in the communist-run country. The Diageo subsidiary and state company Cuba Ron will be equal partners in Santiago SA, a company that will internationally market the Santiago de Cuba brand, one of the island’s premium spirits. To comply with US law, the Diageo subsidiary would have no interaction with any of the beverage group’s US-based businesses or involve any US employees.
COSMETICS
L’Oreal guilty of trade theft
L’Oreal SA must pay a California-based start-up US$91.4 million for stealing its trade secrets, breaching a contract and infringing two patents related to a popular system that protects hair during bleaching treatments, a federal jury ruled on Monday. Olaplex LLC had accused the French giant of stealing the secrets in a meeting in California in 2015, when the companies were in talks for L’Oreal to buy the start-up. L’Oreal, during a week-long trial in Wilmington, Delaware, said it independently conceived the use of a critical acid in August 2014 and developed its products on its own. The jury also found that L’Oreal’s acts were intentional, leaving the door open for the judge to substantially increase the damages if he chooses.
INTERNET
Verizon selling Tumblr
Verizon Communications Inc agreed to sell the blogging platform Tumblr to Automattic Inc, the latest sign the wireless giant is dismantling its online empire. Terms of the transaction were not material, Verizon said, suggesting Tumblr sold for a tiny fraction of the US$1.1 billion it fetched in 2013. Verizon acquired the site as part of its 2017 purchase of Yahoo. Automattic already owns a group of publishing sites, including WordPress and Longreads, and sees Tumblr as a good fit. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the sale, saying that Automattic would take on about 200 staffers.
TELECOMS
Huawei hires trade lobby
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) has hired the law firm Sidley Austin LLP to lobby on trade as the US pressures allies to join it in blacklisting the Chinese telecom giant, which has found itself increasingly mired in US President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing. The lobbying, which began last month, will focus on export controls, trade sanctions “and other national security-related topics,” according to a disclosure filed with the US Senate. The document shows that Huawei is deepening its ties to Sidley Austin, which is already working on the company’s legal challenges in the US, while also ramping up its lobbying presence.
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],”