UNITED STATES
Service sector growth slows
Growth in the services sector, where most Americans work, slowed last month following record expansion in May. The Institute for Supply Management on Tuesday said that its monthly survey of service industries retreated to a reading of 60.1, following an all-time high of 64 in May. Any reading above 50 indicates the sector is expanding. It was the 13th straight month of expansion in the services sector, but the employment index fell into contraction territory with a reading of 49.3, down from May’s 55.3, suggesting many companies are still struggling to hire enough workers.
UNITED KINGDOM
House prices fall
House prices last month fell for the first time in five months, an indication the property market might have lost momentum as a tax incentive was due to come to an end. The average value of a home declined 0.5 percent to ￡260,358 (US$358,993), mortgage lender Halifax said yesterday. The drop followed a 1.2 percent increase in May. A tax break worth as much as ￡15,000 to buyers helped the property market defy the plight of the wider economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, but those still looking for a home last month were almost certainly too late to benefit in full from the waiver, which began to wind down on Thursday last week.
APPAREL
Esquel suing US government
Hong Kong giant Esquel Group (溢達集團) said that it is suing the US government for what it called the “erroneous” blacklisting of a subsidiary, saying it had been “falsely implicated” in the use of forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. The unit, Changji Esquel Textile Co (昌吉溢達紡織), was added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List during the administration of former US president Donald Trump. That designation prohibits US firms from doing business with listed companies without first obtaining a government license. Esquel Group said that the listing was made with no “supporting evidence” and that its factories in Xinjiang do not use forced labor.
ELECTRONICS
New Switch unveiled
Nintendo Co announced a new Switch console for release on Oct. 8, a US$350 gadget likely to stimulate a wave of new software and holiday-season sales. The new device marks the first major hardware upgrade to the console originally released in 2017 for US$299. Its key upgrades are a larger 7-inch OLED screen and a doubling of onboard storage to 64GB. It also comes with improved audio, and a new adjustable stand and dock, according to a statement from the company on Tuesday. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa in May said that the Switch’s sales momentum is unprecedented in the company’s 131-year history.
HOSPITALITY
Spoons seeks debt waivers
British pub operator JD Wetherspoon PLC yesterday said that it plans to seek debt waivers from its lenders for the next financial year, as like-for-like sales continue to slump, despite the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The company said like-for-like bar and food sales slipped 49 percent between April 12 and May 16, a period when outdoor dining was permitted, albeit with some restrictions, while sales were down 14.6 percent between May 17 and Sunday, when pubs were fully open. Wetherspoon, popularly known as just “Spoons,” slumped to a first-half loss in March.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
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