■COMPONENTS
Fujitsu drops HDD heads
Japanese high-tech giant Fujitsu Ltd said yesterday it was ending production of hard disk drive (HDD) heads as part of an overhaul of the loss-making business. The firm said it would book a one-off loss of ¥5 billion (US$56 million) because of its earlier investment in a plant in Nagano city, northwest of Tokyo, to make the components. The facility will continue to make circuit boards and employees working in the HDD head business will be moved to new jobs, it said. The HDD head production will cease at the end of March, but Fujitsu is continuing talks with several companies over a possible sale of its overall HDD business, company spokesman Takashi Koto said.
■MOTORCYCLES
Yamaha recalls bikes
Japan’s Yamaha Motor Co said yesterday it would recall 53,814 motorcycles to replace a defect in rear-wheel shock absorbers that caused slight injuries to one rider. The TW200E models were manufactured between 1987 and 2001 and all were sold in Japan, the motorcycle firm said in a statement. The recall followed six reports of problems with the joint part owing to a lack of tenacity, the statement said. The problem could result in a breakdown of the part and a loss of stability. One rider was slightly injured when a TW200E motorcycle with the defect scraped a guardrail, a Yamaha spokesman said.
■ENERGY
Chinese imports doubled
China’s imports of oil products more than doubled last year as local producers were forced to scale down their activity, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Beijing imported 14.7 million tonnes of oil products, including gasoline, diesel oil and kerosene, last year, up 107.4 percent from the year before, Xinhua said, citing the China Petroleum and Chemical Association. China had to import more after local oil product firms cut or halted their operations, it said. The firms made the move because local price controls prevented them from passing on the cost of soaring global crude oil prices to consumers, it said.
■MINING
Group to buy coal stake
South Korean and Australian firms have agreed to acquire a major stake in an Australian soft coal mine, Yonhap news agency said yesterday. The consortium led by South Korea’s state-run Korea Resources Corp (KORES) will buy a 47.4 percent stake worth 37 billion won (US$26.6 million) in the Baralaba mine in Queensland, the report said. The consortium consists of KORES, SK Energy, Korea East-West Power and Australia’s Cockatoo Coal, it said. The mine will increase its production of soft coal to 4 million tonnes a year by 2013 from 500,000 tonnes, it said. Yonhap quoted KORES president Kim Shin-jong as saying the state mineral explorer would seek to participate in the development of eight other coal mines in Australia.
■INDIA
Bank cuts growth forecast
The central bank is cutting its economic growth forecast to 7 percent — down from an earlier estimate of 7.5 to 8 percent — but is leaving key interest rates unchanged. The bank says growth in industrial production and consumer demand has slowed, business confidence is deteriorating and the fiscal deficit has risen sharply. In his quarterly policy review, Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao said that the global slowdown clearly shows that emerging economies remain closely linked to developed markets.
■DEFENSE
Raytheon wins US contract
Raytheon Co, the world’s largest missile maker, won a contract from the US Army valued at US$154 million to upgrade Patriot air-defense systems for Taiwan. The contract includes upgrade kits for radar and command and control components, a radar refurbishment and related engineering and technical services, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon said in a statement on Monday. The upgrades will allow Taiwan’s Patriot systems to fire the latest version of the missile, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3. The US in October proposed selling US$6.46 billion in weapons to Taiwan, including 330 of the Lockheed Martin Corp-built PAC-3 missiles valued at US$$3.1 billion.
■ENTERTAINMENT
Janet Jackson cancels tour
The global economic crisis has claimed another victim — pop star Janet Jackson’s tour in Japan. The younger sister of pop icon Michael Jackson has called off her trip next month, saying the economic slowdown no longer made it profitable. “Due to the impact of the global economic crisis, she has been obliged to delay her tour,” her promoter, Kyodo Yokohama, said in a statement late on Monday. It offered an apology and said it would refund tickets, which started at ¥9,800 (US$110) each. Jackson had been due to perform on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15 at a major concert venue in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama.
■TELECOMS
Apple awarded patent
Apple has won a US patent for touch-screen controls and gained a potential legal weapon against iPhone competitors. US Patent 7,479,949 is awarded to “[Steve] Jobs et al” for a method of “detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display” to command computing devices. A multi-page patent available online at the US Patent and Trade Office on Monday details iPhone or iPod Touch commands such as finger or thumb swiping, twisting, or spreading to flip pages, rotate views or enlarge images.
■AUTOMOBILES
Honda shifts output
Honda Motor Co said yesterday it would roll back production further in Japan and North America but step up output in China, where demand is still growing despite the global economic crisis. Japan’s second-largest automaker plans to boost output in China as output at the Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co in China has steadily risen in recent years, producing more than 160,000 vehicles last year, up nearly 30 percent from the previous year, a company official said. Honda is hoping to raise output to full capacity of 240,000 vehicles, bringing its total output in China to 650,000, she said.
■TELECOMS
Siemens retains forecast
German industrial giant Siemens said yesterday it would stick with its operating profit forecast of 8 billion euros to 8.5 billion euros (US$10.6 billion to US$11.2 billion) despite the global slowdown slashing earnings. The target for the year to September 2009 has “become more ambitious ... and we will have to look at it carefully each quarter,” Siemens said as it reported an 81 percent plunge in net profit to 1.23 billion euros during the last quarter. The Munich-based firm said sales in the quarter ending last month rose 7 percent to 19.63 billion euros, but orders were down 8 percent at 22.2 billion euros. Siemens head Peter Loscher warned shareholders that the “most difficult quarters are still to come.”
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS