TELECOMS
Quake affects Ericsson supply
Top mobile telecom equipment maker Ericsson warned that Japan’s devastating earthquake would hit the supply of components, adding to concerns about a sector already hampered by shortages. “It is reasonable to expect that the events in Japan will affect supply of components, but it is too early to say to what extent,” Ericsson said in a statement yesterday. Ericsson said it did not expect the disaster in Japan to have any material impact on its first quarter sales and it had no reports of injured or missing employees there.
ENTERTAINMENT
Box office revenue plunges
Early estimates indicate a steep drop-off in box office revenue outside the US following the earthquake in Japan. International movie ticket sales plunged 60 percent last weekend from a year earlier, according to Standard & Poor’s Equity Research analyst Tuna Amobi. Amobi notes that Japan is one of Hollywood’s biggest markets, accounting for about 10 percent of international box office revenue. Meanwhile, Warner Entertainment Japan Inc says theaters will stop showing Clint Eastwood’s movie Hereafter, which has scenes depicting the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Sony Pictures is delaying the release in Japan of Battle: Los Angeles.
TELECOMS
China Mobile profits up 3.9%
China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers, says profit last year rose 3.9 percent on growing demand for mobile Internet services and as it signed up more customers. The Beijing-based company said yesterday that profit rose to 119.6 billion yuan (US$18.2 billion) last year. Revenue rose 7.3 per cent to 485.2 billion yuan. China Mobile said mobile Internet service was accounted for about a third of revenue last year.
AUTOMOBILES
Porsche revenue rises 59%
German luxury sports car maker Porsche said on Tuesday revenue rose 59 percent in the five months from August to December to a record 3.87 billion euros (US$5.4 billion). The company is making a transition from a fiscal year that runs from Aug. 1 to July 31 to one based on the normal calendar year, as is the case with Volkswagen, ahead of a planned tie-up. Operating profit rose to 688 million euros from 227 million euros in the same period in 2009.
MEDIA
Newspaper ads at 25-year low
Newspaper advertising in the US has sunk to a 25-year low as marketing budgets followed readers to the Internet, where advertising is far cheaper than what publishers have been able to command in print. Advertisers spent US$25.8 billion on newspapers’ print and digital editions last year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Newspaper Association of America. That’s the lowest amount since 1985, when total newspaper advertising stood at US$25.2 billion. After adjusting for inflation, newspaper advertising now stands at about the same level as nearly 50 years ago.
INTERNET
YouTube buys Green Parrot
Google-owned YouTube said on Tuesday that it has bought an Irish digital video company whose technology can help improve the quality of amateur footage submitted to the video-sharing site. Financial details of the acquisition of Green Parrot Pictures, which was founded by Anil Kokaram, an associate professor at the engineering school of Trinity College in Dublin, were not disclosed.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
STABLE RESULTS: Despite June’s lower consolidated revenue, second-quarter sales still reached a record high, driven by demand for chips for AI applications Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales of NT$263.71 billion (US$9.02 billion) for last month, its second-lowest monthly result this year. The world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement that its revenue last month only fared better than the NT$260.01 billion posted in February. Last month’s figure rose 26.9 percent from a year earlier, but slumped 17.7 percent from May, the company said. However, second-quarter revenue reached NT$933.8 billion, a record high for a single quarter, company data showed. The figure represented growth of 11.26 percent from the first quarter and 38.6 percent from a year earlier. Previously, TSMC said that
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