South Korea
Producer prices rise
Producer prices rose at the fastest pace in three months last month as the cost of staple foods including vegetables and fruits increased. Prices paid to producers were up 4 percent from a year earlier, compared with a gain of 3.1 percent in August, the Bank of Korea said in a statement in Seoul yesterday. Prices gained 1 percent last month from the previous month, the most since July last year. Prices of agricultural, forestry and fisheries products gained 30 percent last month from a year earlier, the most since June 1981, the report showed. Vegetable prices rose 126 percent and fruit costs rose 58 percent.
Communications
Apple, Verizon may team up
Apple Inc plans to make a version of its popular iPhone 4 available through Verizon Wireless by early next year, the New York Times reported. The iPhone is now available only through AT&T Inc. Adding Verizon Wireless, the largest US mobile phone operator, could significantly boost sales of Apple’s phones, which face rising competition from smartphones that use Google Inc’s Android operating system. The Times, citing an anonymous source briefed by Apple, reported the development late on Friday. The Wall Street Journal also reported the move earlier in the week. Both Verizon Wireless and Apple declined to comment.
Energy
Daewoo to branch out
Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co, the world’s second-largest shipyard, will move into the wind power and renewable energy industries as it seeks to triple revenue to 40 trillion won (US$35.7 billion) and boost its operating margin to 10 percent by 2020, the company said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Daewoo Shipbuilding reported revenue of 12.4 trillion won and operating profit of 684.5 billion won last year. The company’s operating margin fell to 5.5 percent last year, from 9.3 percent in 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Energy
Constellation shocks EDF
French electricity generator EDF said on Saturday it was shocked and disappointed that Constellation Energy has decided to pull out of a project to build a nuclear power plant in the US state of Maryland. “EDF is extremely disappointed and shocked to learn that Constellation has unilaterally decided to withdraw from the Calvert Cliffs 3 project,” the company said in a statement. Earlier, Constellation Energy had said it was unable to obtain a workable US federal loan guarantee for their joint venture, Unistar, to build the third-generation reactor. The company said the federal loan guarantee application had not been withdrawn, but that its cost was “unreasonably burdensome and would create unacceptable risks and costs for our company.”
G20 Summit
Gates going to Seoul
More than 100 global business leaders including Microsoft founder Bill Gates have confirmed they will attend next month’s G20 business summit in Seoul, organizers said yesterday. They said Gates, who now co-chairs the charitable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would be among 112 executives taking part in the Nov. 10 to Nov. 11 event on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit. Companies will include Royal Dutch Shell from the Netherlands, France’s Total, the ING financial group from the Netherlands, Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard and Switzerland’s Nestle, organizers said in a statement.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
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