AUTOMAKERS
Chrysler to add 1,250 jobs
Chrysler said on Thursday it would add 1,250 jobs at two Detroit, Michigan, factories next year. The company plans to add 1,100 people at the Jefferson North factory that assembles the Jeep Grand Cherokee to help build a diesel model for North America next year. The plant will get a third shift of workers. Chrysler will also add 150 jobs by reopening the Conner Avenue factory to make a Street Racing Team version of the Dodge Viper muscle car. CEO Sergio Marchionne said in a statement that the company’s future was interwoven with the city of Detroit. Chrysler is using gritty images of Detroit in advertising that highlights its comeback from a 2009 trip through bankruptcy protection.
TECHNOLOGY
Global spending outlook cut
Research firm Gartner Inc has lowered its global technology spending growth forecast because of the sluggish economy and the euro crisis. Gartner said on Thursday that the computer hardware sector would be the hardest hit, hurt by supply constraints in the hard disk drive industry. Gartner now expects worldwide spending on technology to grow 3.7 percent this year to US$3.8 trillion. That’s down from its earlier forecast of 4.6 percent growth. Last year, global tech spending grew 6.9 percent from the prior year, to US$3.7 trillion. Gartner expects spending to grow by just 0.7 percent this year in Western Europe, down from its earlier forecast of 3.4 percent growth, as the outcome of the euro crisis is not yet clear.
ECONOMY
Crisis tolerance limits seen
The global economy could withstand widespread disruption from a major natural disaster or attack by militants for only a week, a report by UK-based think tank Chatham House said yesterday. The frequency of natural disasters, such as extreme weather events, appears to be increasing and globalization has increased their impact, the report found. Events such as the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, which grounded flights in Europe, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami and Thailand’s floods last year, showed that key sectors and businesses can be severely affected if disruption to production or transport goes on for more than a week. The report said up to 30 percent of developed countries’ GDP could be directly threatened by crises.
CHINA
Retail sales rise 17 percent
China’s retail sales rose an estimated 17 percent year-on-year to 18 trillion yuan (US$2.86 trillion) last year, as the government sought to boost domestic consumption, the Ministry of Commerce said. Retail sales are forecast to grow more than 14 percent annually this year, the ministry said, according to a report by Xinhua news agency late on Thursday. Separately, the ministry said growth in foreign direct investment slowed sharply last year amid the world economic turmoil, rising 9 percent year-on-year to US$115 billion, the China Daily reported yesterday. Foreign investment rose more than 17 percent to US$105.7 billion in 2010.
OIL
China raises crude levy
Beijing has raised the threshold for a tax on crude oil charged to the nation’s two biggest producers, the firms said, helping ease their financial burden and encourage output. The Ministry of Finance hiked the minimum level for the levy to US$55 per barrel, up from US$40, PetroChina (中石油) and the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (中國石化) said in statements on Thursday. The move was retroactive to November last year, they said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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