Archives: December 2007

China Cleans Up Policy Bank

Posted by: Ihlwan Moon on December 31

(My Beijing-based colleague Chi-Chu Tschang wrote the following. Respecting China’s tradition, Chi-Chu filed it well before the turn of the year.) It’s a Chinese tradition to clean house and pay...

Sharp-Samsung Legal Tussles Herald U.S. Marketing Race

Posted by: Ihlwan Moon on December 31

A recent spate of legal tussles between Japan’s Sharp and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics over LCD-related patent infringement heralds a fierce fight in the U.S. for a bigger share of...

Sony Exits Rear-Projection TVs

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 27

Mention Sony TVs and the Bravia line of flat-panel liquid-crystal-display sets comes to mind for most people. And no wonder: The marketing behind Sony's flat TVs has been nothing short...

Strange Bedfellows: Google and NTT DoCoMo

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 26

Openness isn't a word you'd normally associate with NTT DoCoMo. Japan's No. 1 wireless carrier is, after all, a stalwart defender of the vertical integration model. That's another way of...

Another Bruise for Sanyo

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 26

At Sanyo Electric, it's gone from bad to worse. The Japanese electronics and appliance company's stock dropped to an 11-month low after yesterday's announcement that the company had restated six...

China's stocking stuffer for Morgan Stanley

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on December 20

China's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund has clearly gotten into the seasonal spirit of giving. The $5 billion investment it's making in Morgan Stanley is quite the little stocking stuffer...

Medtronic's New Chinese Partner

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 18

Back in March, Medtronic Inc., the big American medical device manufacturer, announced plans to form a joint venture with a Chinese company called Shandong Weigao. For months after that announcement,...

Vietnamese headgear is de rigeur

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on December 17

Hats off to the Vietnamese government [pardon the inverted pun] for passing a nationwide law that requires all motorcyclists to don helmets as of December 15. Half-hearted attempts have been...

Choosing the Least Undesirable in Korea

Posted by: Ihlwan Moon on December 14

There’s no real excitement in South Korea only five days before the country’s presidential election. Few on the streets of Seoul doubt the candidate of the conservative opposition party, former...

Investors Hammer Taiwan's Computer Makers

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 13

Just how dominant are the Taiwanese in the global PC industry? Here’s an impressive stat: According to DisplaySearch, Taiwan’s electronics companies make 89% of the world’s notebook computers. Problem is,...

Suzuki to make Splash in India but no sign of a $3,000 car

Posted by: Ian Rowley on December 12

Last week, I wrote a quick piece after Suzuki chairman Osamu Suzuki raised doubts over plans by both Tata and Carlos Ghosn's Nissan-Renault alliance to make a $3,000 car for...

Indian Pharma Investors Shrug Off Latest Lawsuit

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 12

Barely a month goes by without news of a big multinational drugmaker suing an upstart Indian rival company for patent infringement. Big Pharma companies worried about threats from generics makers...

Sony's Stringer Talks

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 11

Sony Chairman and Chief Exec Sir Howard Stringer met with reporters in Tokyo earlier today. Here are edited excerpts from the hourlong Q&A. On the PlayStation Network It's not proprietary....

Help in Guangzhou

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 10

From my BusinessWeek colleague David Rocks, who's traveling in southern China's Guangdong province: "I was having trouble getting online at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, in the heart of...

Beijing Warms up to New Delhi

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 10

The U.S.-India nuclear deal is facing renewed criticism from members of the ruling coalition in New Delhi. (See, for instance, this Reuters story about the latest threat from India's Communists,...

Japan's Fund Envy

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 06

With billion-dollar funds from Dubai, Russia and Brazil shaking up the world's wealthiest markets, Japan appears to be suffering from a serious case of fund-envy. Over the next year, Japan's...

Olympics driving mass evictions

Posted by: Dexter Roberts on December 05

Uh oh--here comes a bit more bad publicity for Beijing in the run-up to next year's Olympics. Already under fire following reports that China is collecting a database on all...

The myth of China's online superiority

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on December 05

Are young Chinese really more cyber-savvy than Americans? Yes, says a recent survey by ad agency JWT and Barry Diller’s IAC. According to the survey (here’s a summary), 86% of...

Yahoo, eBay form trans-Pacific online auction market

Posted by: Kenji Hall on December 04

At first glance, eBay's deal with Yahoo Japan, announced yesterday, seemed like the U.S. online auctioneer might be plotting a return to Japan. You'll recall that five years ago a...

Militant's Manual to a Smaller Carbon Footprint

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on December 04

I decided to make my own modest contribution to the Bali Forum on Climate Change by staying home in Hong Kong instead of flying 4.5 hours to cover the story...

Japan's taxi drivers join the fight against deflation

Posted by: Ian Rowley on December 03

Spare a thought for Tokyo's taxi drivers. Today, they got a raise for the first time in a decade. As of this morning, the minimum fare to take a taxi...