ELECTRONICS
HTC announces payout
HTC Corp (宏達電) plans to pay a cash dividend of NT$37 per share for last year, and 50 shares for each 1,000 currently held, the company said in a stock exchange filing yesterday. Separately, the Taoyuan-based company will pay about NT$1.8 billion (US$63 million) to buy approximately 48,975m2 adjacent to its current headquarters, it said. HTC reiterated on Friday that the company is optimistic about the growth of its content services and announced it will launch its own streaming video service, HTC Watch, in the second quarter this year. Although the new service may not contribute much to revenue during its first year, it holds incredible potential for the future, the company said during its online earnings call, using Apple’s iTunes store as a reference point.
SHIPPING
Evergreen posts profit
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), the listed unit of Asia’s biggest container line, posted a fourth straight quarterly profit, as the global economic recovery boosted shipping volumes. Net income was NT$1.31 billion, or NT$0.41 a share, in the first quarter, compared with a net loss of NT$87 million, or NT$0.03, a year earlier, the Taipei-based company said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing on Friday.
? JAPAN
Supply biggest challenge
Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said the country’s biggest challenge is to restore supply chains damaged by the March 11 earthquake. Easing supply constraints will lead the economy to recover, Shirakawa said yesterday at a parliamentary session. The central bank views the nation’s economic outlook as “severe,” he said.
INTERNET
Amazon launches music site
Amazon.com Inc this week launched a store that sells digital songs for US$0.69, an attempt to bring more people to its e-commerce Web site and bolster its plan to charge people to store tunes on distant servers known as the cloud. It has cut the price on singles to US$0.69 in the past, but this is the first time it has dedicated a page to the offering. About 200 songs out of the 15 million available have had prices cut to US$0.69. Craig Pape, the director of Amazon Music, said cutting prices boosts music sales and improves the site’s music recommendation engine.
MEDIA
‘Boston Globe’ nets interest
The Boston Globe reported on Friday that a businessman is preparing to offer more than US$200 million to buy the struggling newspaper from its owner, The New York Times Co. The Boston Globe said Aaron Kushner will make a formal offer within the next few weeks for the Times Co’s New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe, Boston.com, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette of central Massachusetts and Telegram.com.
CHEMICALS
DuPont raises Danisco offer
DuPont raised its US$5.8 billion offer for Danish food-additives maker Danisco by about 5.3 percent in what it called a best and final proposal. DuPont said on Friday it was offering 700 Danish kroner per share for Danisco and extending the offer period for the last time to May 13. The Delaware-based chemical company also said it was exercising its right to require 80 percent of shares tendered to go through with the deal, down from 90 percent. DuPont offered 665 Danish kroner in a January tender offer.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
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