MALAYSIA
Economy grows by 6.4%
Malaysia’s economy grew a better-than-expected 6.4 percent in the second quarter on the back of stronger exports and robust domestic demand, the Malaysian central bank said yesterday. Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy said exports jumped 14.2 percent in the three months through June compared with the same quarter last year, which saw slack external demand for Malaysian goods. Private investment, especially in the services and manufacturing sectors, surged 12.1 percent, while private consumption grew 6.5 percent in the quarter year-on-year, the bank said.
COMMUNICATIONS
Samsung to buy US startup
Samsung Electronics Co said yesterday it had reached a deal to buy US home automation startup SmartThings, as the South Korean electronics giant aims to expand beyond the increasingly saturated smartphone market. The world’s top smartphone maker said it had entered into a deal to buy the US app maker, which allows people to monitor and control their home appliances via mobile devices. Samsung gave no details of the value of the deal. SmartThings is to continue to operate independently under its founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson and is set to become part of Samsung’s Open Innovation Center, Samsung said in a statement.
APPLIANCES
GE mulls sale of division
General Electric Co (GE) said that it is considering the sale of its appliance division, part of its effort to focus on selling more complex and profitable industrial equipment. The confirmation came after Swedish appliance maker Electrolux released a statement on Thursday that it was in discussions to buy the business from GE, which is based in Fairfield, Connecticut. GE’s appliance division, which includes a much smaller lighting business that is not being discussed as part of this transaction, earned US$381 million of US$8.3 billion in sales last year, for a profit margin of 4.6 percent. The company’s industrial division as a whole earned US$16.2 billion on sales of US$103.6 billion, for a far more robust margin of 15.7 percent.
BEVERAGES
Coke buys stake in Monster
Coca-Cola Co announced on Thursday it plans to pay US$2.15 billion for a 16.7 percent stake in Monster Beverage, cementing a distribution-based link between the two that had added significantly to Coca-Cola’s profits. The deal would lock in for the soft-drink giant a share of the energy-drink market, where its own brands have lagged far behind Monster Energy and rival Red Bull. Coca-Cola plans to transfer ownership of its energy drink unit — brands including NOS, Full Throttle and Burn — to Monster, and take over Monster’s non-energy brands like Hansen’s Natural Sodas, Peace Tea and Hubert’s Lemonade.
INTERNET
Yahoo Stores relaunched
Yahoo Inc announced on Thursday the relaunch of its e-commerce platform, which allows small businesses to easily set up online retailing. The new Yahoo Stores system, a post on a company blog said, allows users to “turn your idea into a business in less than two minutes.” Yahoo Small Business head Amit Kumar said the new platform was “a completely reimagined, next-generation version” of a service Yahoo began 16 years ago. The move should help Yahoo regain a foothold in online retailing, in a market expected to grow to US$304 billion this year, according to the research firm eMarketer.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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