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World Business Quick Take

■ Semiconductors
Asian sales expected to rise
Sales of semiconductors in Asia outside Japan will increase 19 percent this year to US$68.2 billion as more manufacturers move pro-duction to Asia, market researcher Gartner Inc said. Revenue will probably rise by an average 15 percent a year to reach US$116.6 billion in 2007, Gartner said. Growth will be driven by China, where sales will jump 23 percent to US$28.4 billion this year and reach US$54 billion in 2007, Gartner said. Infineon Technologies and Semiconductor Manufac-turing International Corp (中芯國際集成 電路), China's biggest chipmaker, are among the companies expanding in China.

■ Technology
Retailer outsourcing grows
Increasing numbers of retailers plan to spend more money outsourcing their information technology (IT) operations in the next two years globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, a newly-released survey said yester-day. The survey by IBM Business Consulting Ser-vices polled chief informa-tion officers of 78 retail companies worldwide, including 24 in the Asia-Pacific region. The results published in The Business Times found nearly 40 percent expect to spend more than 20 percent of their corporate IT budgets on outsourcing in the future. "This is a sharp increase from last year's survey which found 41 percent of retailers spend less than 10 percent of their IT budget on outsourcing," said Patrick Medley, retail goods leader for Southeast and South Asia. Most of the growth in the next three to five years is expected to come from convenience stores, gifts and crafts -- where IT outsourcing budgets are likely to double from 12.6 percent to 25 percent, he said.

■ Electronics
NEC's profit soars
Japan's NEC Corp said yesterday that its group net profit in the six months to last month surged 15 times from a year earlier largely due to huge gains from the listing of two subsidiaries. The consolidated interim net profit amounted to ¥15.4 billion (US$141 million), up from ¥1 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. NEC's pre-tax profit in the half year nearly quadrupled to ¥77.7 billion, compared with ¥20.3 billion a year earlier, on sales which gained 5 percent to ¥2.28 trillion,it said. "The main reason for such an increase in interim [pre-tax] income before income taxes was that NEC recorded a considerable amount of gains from stock issuances as a result of the listings of NEC Electronics Corp and NEC System Technologies," it said.

■ Finance
Sony mulls holding group
Sony Corp said yesterday it was considering setting up a holding company to oversee the operations of its three financial subsidiaries. The holding company would oversee Sony Life Insurance Co, Sony Assurance Inc and Sony Bank, a Sony spokes-woman said. She declined to give further details. The global electronics giant also reported yesterday its group net profit fell 25.3 percent in the three months to last month to ¥32.9 billion (US$300 million), down from ¥44.1 billion a year earlier due to higher corporate income tax payments. Pre-tax profit fell 9.8 percent to ¥4.41 billion in the September quarter from ¥4.88 billion a year earlier, Sony said in a statement. In contrast, group sales rose slightly to ¥1.797 trillion in July-September from ¥1.789 billion in the same quarter of last year.

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