TELECOMS
Nokia plans more cutbacks
The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia said yesterday it planned to cut 3,500 jobs in Romania, Germany and the US by the end of next year, according to a statement from the company. These cuts are in addition to the 4,000 job cuts and 3,000 outsourced jobs Nokia announced in April as part of a massive restructuring effort. The firm also hinted at more job cuts next year, saying that it would review the long-term role of its factories in Salo, Finland, Komarom, Hungary, and Reynosa, Mexico, adding that it expected to have more details “into the possible headcount impacts” at these sites next year.
COMPUTERS
AMD cuts Q3 forecasts
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-largest maker of processors for personal computers, reduced its forecasts for third-quarter sales and profitability, citing manufacturing glitches. Sales in the period ending tomorrow will increase 4 percent to 6 percent from the previous period, the California-based company said in a statement yesterday. That compares with an earlier prediction for growth of about 10 percent. Globalfoundries Inc, a spinoff of AMD’s manufacturing operations that now supplies the company with chips, is facing production problems at its plant in Dresden, Germany. That has resulted in a shortfall in the company’s s newest processors, the company said.
COMPUTERS
HP beefs up defenses
A published report says Hewlett-Packard (HP) is beefing up its defenses in a bid to fend off activist investors who, with enough shares, could demand drastic changes at the company. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that HP has hired Goldman Sachs to help formulate a strategy to guard against shareholder activism. With the company’s market value down about US$60 billion since former chief executive Mark Hurd resigned under last year, the company is under intense pressure to engineer a turnaround. Last week, HP fired Hurd’s replacement, Leo Apotheker and replaced him with former eBay Inc chief executive Meg Whitman.
INTERNET
Flickr launches new service
Yahoo is touching up its Flickr photograph-sharing service with a new way for friends located in different locations to simultaneously browse through pictures. The “Photo Session” feature introduced on Wednesday is designed to replicate the experience of leafing through an old-fashioned photograph album, even if the people sharing the experience are located thousands of kilometers apart. Any of Flickr’s nearly 170 million users can activate a session by obtaining a special link that can be sent to other invitees. A photography session can be done on iPhones, iPads and personal computers using the Safari, Firefox and Chrome browsers.
FINANCE
Fidelity defends manager
US investment fund giant Fidelity Management yesterday defended a Hong Kong portfolio manager charged with insider trading, saying he “did not violate any laws or regulations.” The comments came after documents revealed on Wednesday that the city’s financial secretary has accused George Stairs of improperly trading shares in Chinese food giant Chaoda Modern Agriculture (超大現代農業). The Chinese company’s chairman Kwok Ho (郭浩) and chief financial officer Andy Chan (陳志寶) were also charged in the case for allegedly supplying Stairs with inside information before a share offering in June 2009.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
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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