China, the world's largest mobile-phone market by users, said subscriptions rose to 296 million last month, exceeding the US population for the first time, as China Mobile (HK) Ltd and China Unicom Ltd boosted sales. \nThe nation added 5.4 million accounts last month, bringing new subscriptions this year to 27 million, the Ministry of Information Industry said. \nAt this rate, the percentage of Chinese people who own mobile phones may rise by 50 percent in less than two years, said CLSA Ltd analyst Francis Cheung. \n"There is still a lot of room there," Cheung said, who forecast the number of mobile accounts would rise to 334 million by the end of this year. \n"It's a huge country," Cheung said. \nChina, adding users at a rate of two every second, overtook the US, with a population of 293 million, as the world's largest mobile-phone market by customers in 2001, helped by rising affluence and falling call rates. \nStill, only one in five Chinese has a mobile-phone account, compared with one in two people in the US and about two in three in Japan. \nThe so-called penetration rate in the Philippines is about 30 percent. \n"There is no problem for China hitting at least levels similar to the Philippines," Cheung said. \nMobile services in China are provided by China Mobile, the world's biggest cellular operator by users, and China Unicom. \nChina Mobile's revenue of US$19 billion last year ranked third, after Britain's Vodafone Group Plc and Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. \nChina Mobile's sales may rise to US$25 billion in 2006, according to a Thomson Financial survey of 15 analysts. \nUnicom's sales may rise to US$12.2 billion in 2006, from US$7.9 billion last year, Thomson Financial said.
UNCONVINCING: The US Congress questioned whether the company’s Chinese owners pose a national security risk and how the app might influence young users TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew (周受資), confronted with an unforgiving, distrustful US Congress, tried to give answers in his testimony on Thursday that avoided offending either the US government or China. However, his evasiveness left Congress unsatisfied, with representatives hungrier than ever to punish TikTok for ties to its parent company ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), based in Beijing. He did not bring his company any closer to a resolution. Politically, TikTok is in a tougher spot. Its executives had been discussing divesting from ByteDance to resolve US national security concerns, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. However, China this week said
Sanofi SA’s drug Dupixent succeeded in a late-stage trial for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), raising the odds that the blockbuster would be the first biologic medicine cleared to treat the lung disorder. Dupixent, which is already prescribed for asthma and some skin conditions, showed a 30 percent reduction in the rate at which patients’ COPD worsened compared with those who received a placebo during the stage-three Boreas trial, the company said in a statement yesterday. The positive data could herald a new era of cutting-edge treatments for the life-threatening respiratory affliction and provide another major boost in demand for the French
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by US trade sanctions, the Chinese tech giant’s founder said, according to a speech transcript from last month posted on Friday by a Chinese university. Ren Zhengfei (任正非) said Huawei had over the past three years replaced the 13,000 components with domestic Chinese substitutes, and had redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products, the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University said. “As of now, our circuit board [production] has stabilized, because we have a supply of domestically produced components,” Ren said. He did not give details
SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT: The international trade group said the sector would recover from a slump, with spending expected to rise 4.2 percent to US$24.9 billion Taiwan is to retain its position as the top spender on semiconductor front-end equipment and facilities next year, with spending expected to increase 4.2 percent year-on-year to US$24.9 billion, international trade group SEMI said yesterday. The spending forecast matches an expected recovery in global semiconductor equipment and facilities investment next year, it said. International equipment spending is to return to growth next year, SEMI said in a report, forecasting 21 percent growth to US$92 billion. The expansion would manly be driven by robust demand for semiconductors in the automotive and high-performance computing segments, the association said. “This quarter’s SEMI World Fab Forecast update
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