INDIA
Digital cash stocks surge
Prime Minister Narendra Modi might offer another gift to electronic cash companies. An index of the stocks has gained 12 percent since November last year’s surprise currency ban, and might further rally after the government introduced tax rebates on digital transactions on Dec. 25 last year. The gain in the gauge of 23 companies that make the devices and offer cashless services compares with the S&P BSE SENSEX’s 3 percent drop since Nov. 8 last year, when Modi invalidated 86 percent of the nation’s currency in circulation. Modi rolled out a slew of measures including rewards, tax rebates and discounts for digital transactions on Dec. 25.
TRANSPORT
Uber aims to placate critics
The ride-hailing company Uber and local governments often do not play well together. Uber pays little heed to regulations while city officials scramble to keep up with the company’s rapid deployment and surging popularity. However, with a new data-focused product, Uber is offering a tiny olive branch to its municipal critics. The company on Sunday unveiled Movement, a stand-alone Web site it hopes will persuade city planners to consider Uber as part of urban development and transit systems in the future. The site, which Uber is to invite planning agencies and researchers to visit in the coming weeks, is to allow outsiders to study traffic patterns and speeds across cities using data collected by tens of thousands of Uber vehicles. Users can use Movement to compare average trip times across certain points in cities and see what effect events might have on traffic patterns.
AUTOMAKERS
Mercedes-Benz leads pack
Mercedes-Benz is expected to reach its goal of becoming the largest premium automaker four years early — a feat achieved only after it stopped chasing market share and focused on making stylish high-tech cars. Introducing an elegant, sporty design and establishing itself as a pioneer in new technologies has helped revive the Mercedes brand which analysts say will help keep the Stuttgart-based automaker ahead of the pack. The achievement is a coup for Daimler chief executive officer Dieter Zetsche, who struggled to revive the company following a messy divorce from mass market brand Chrysler in 2007. On Sunday, Daimler said it had sold 2.08 million Mercedes-Benz branded passenger cars last year, taking the top spot from BMW AG, which has held the premium sales crown since 2005.
MACROECONOMICS
German production edges up
German industrial production crept up in November last year, official data showed yesterday, falling short of analysts’ predictions and moderating hopes Europe’s largest economy would end last year with a growth spurt. Production increased by 0.4 percent, correcting for price, seasonal and calendar effects, the federal statistics office Destatis said. Analysts surveyed by Factset had predicted slightly more robust growth of 0.65 percent. Investor and business sentiment indexes have been riding high in recent months after recovering from a post-Brexit shock, prompting some observers to predict a winter bonanza for the German economy. In a separate release, Destatis reported that German exports had seen a big increase of 3.9 percent in November last year, correcting for seasonal and calendar effects. Together, the data provide “some evidence that the German economy gained momentum in the final quarter,” ING Diba bank analyst Carsten Brzeski said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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