| The STRATEGIC NEWS SERVICE N E W S L E T T E R
The most accurate predictive letter in computing and telecommunications,
***SNS*** Asia Letter, Q2 2010: Tipping Points
By Our SNS Asia Stealth Editor
__
New Heads and Hands: I am looking for a new Executive Assistant, and for a person or program to sell SNS site licenses to global corporations; details on both are in the “In Other House News” section of this letter. – mra.
__
Save the Date – the Second Annual FiReGlobal : West Coast conference will be held on November 11th, at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, in Seattle. You can register early at preferred Member Rates here:
[We are currently seeking FiReStar companies for FiReGlobal : West Coast – companies that are making a positive impact on the world, and which need and deserve notice. Please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris at sam@stratnews.com if you wish to nominate your, or another, company.]
“You are really doing a great service to the world by showcasing such a variety of frontier ideas, and you seem to take some chances, which is also great to see. I’ve given talks and attended annual SoCal, TED, and Renaissance meetings, and yours creates the best atmosphere for an exchange of ideas in a professional yet easygoing atmosphere.” – James Fallon, Chief Scientific Officer, NeuroRepair Inc., a selected FiReStarter 2010 company.
Many thanks to our FiReGlobal : West Coast 2010 sponsors:
Tesla Motors, SNS Global Clean Energy Partner:
– and SNS Communication Partner Nyhus Communications:
Publisher’s Note: Our Asia Editor is in Stealth Mode, for reasons you are free to guess, and which we will neither deny nor confirm. Suffice it to say that he is happily employed and is producing the kind of terrific insight and on-the-ground detail to which SNS members have become accustomed. If you’re interested in Asia, you’ll love this issue. – mra.
» Asia Letter, Q2 2010: Tipping Points
By Our SNS Asia Stealth Editor
It’s a long flight back to Singapore from Sydney, with plenty of time to read, sleep, or get out the CarryAlong PC. The guy next to me is way out in front – I’m still looking out the window at the cloudscape, while he’s already set up and leaning into a spreadsheet. He does look up when the wine comes around.
“Hard at work, I see.”
“Hedge fund.”
“Me, too. Was, anyway. I put a ‘d’ on it just before our latest trip south.”
“d”?
“As in ‘hedged.’ It’s a little boring, but being net long with selective hedges that didn’t always work almost killed me.”
“You and 3,000 others.”
“What do you think of the market?”
“Markets are hysterical.”
“Great. My retirement funds are in the hands of hysterics.”
“They don’t have to be.”
“There’s a theory that the quality of human thought is declining due to excessive short-termism, information overload, CrackBerry 24x7. There’s no time for genius to develop.”
“There’s another theory: that you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”
“Samsung would be happy – with one-third of the Korean Peninsula, including the land and people.” – Korean government official, many years ago.
The speaker was wrong, of course. What Samsung wanted was one-third of the memory chip, cellphone, and TV markets, which it already has or is close to getting. Among other things, it also wants to be a world leader in solar panels.
How is that possible, given the size of the industry in China, the inventiveness of the industry in Europe and the United States, and Japan’s decision to take back industry leadership with new feed-in tariffs, power plant projects, and five to ten times increases in production capacity?
Samsung and Nanosys have just announced a strategic alliance including an equity investment from Samsung, licensing of Nanosys nano-materials IP, and joint development of thin-film solar and other products.
You got it. The Americans sell their technology, and Samsung’s 275,000 employees have something new to make. The Koreans are not in business to put their own people out of work.
Nanosys claims that its technology can raise the efficiency of thin-film solar by 40%. That would put it in the same league as Solar Frontier’s CIS technology (13%-plus). Samsung plans to increase solar production four times by mid-2011, to 130MW. Solar Frontier’s new 900MW plant in Miyazaki should come on line at about the same time, bringing its total capacity to 1GW. That sounds like Samsung’s next target.
Also, Samsung and Seagate have agreed to joint development and cross-licensing of enterprise-class SSD [Solid State Disk] controller technology specific to 30nm MLC [multi-level cell] NAND flash memory. Samsung is not leaving that market to Micron and Intel.
Samsung has appointed former Apple engineer Brian Berkeley vice president of the OLED [Organic Light Emitting Diode] R&D Center at Samsung Mobile Display. One of his projects is to make large-screen OLED TVs technically and commercially viable. Epson tried and failed. Sony tried and failed. We wouldn’t bet against Samsung.
Samsung plans to start 3D movie screening over the Internet through its online application store. This may put it in competition with Google TV, in which Intel, Logitech, and Sony are also involved. But Samsung is apparently already in discussions with Google. “They are a partner of ours already.”
The juggernaut rolls on, scooping up people, technology, and new growth opportunities. Samsung Electronics plans to triple its total capital spending and R&D budget to $23 billion this year and hire 10,000 new workers.
On May 17, the company released the following statement by Chairman Lee Kun-Hee: “Although the global economic environment and business conditions remain changeable and uncertain, if we invest aggressively in expanding facilities and in hiring, then these circumstances also present Samsung an opportunity for future growth and to stimulate the economy.”
Samsung isn’t the only one.Yonhap reports that Hyundai Heavy Industries has agreed to build two solar power plants for Matinee Energy in Arizona – one 150MW and one 25MW – with a total value of $700 million. The solar modules will be produced in Korea. Commenting on the deal, a Hyundai executive said, "This will be an opportunity for Hyundai Heavy to become a global solar power firm." HHI has been in the business since 2008.
SEOUL, Aug. 11 (Yonhap) -- Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., South Korea's top shipbuilder, said Wednesday it has signed a US$700 million contract to build solar power plants in the United States.
~ Yonhap News, August 11, 2010
A study by Japan’s National Institute for Research Advancement forecasts that, barring a drastic economic slowdown, the number of middle- and upper-class people in Asia outside Japan should double to almost 2 billion by 2020. If economic growth drops to 3% in China and 1% in India, the figure would be only 1.55 billion. “Middle class” is defined by an annual income of $5,000 to $35,000 – enough, even at the low end, to trigger mass purchases of consumer goods. In other words, over the next decade, the number of new potential customers in Asia is likely to equal or exceed the entire population of North America and Europe.
Huawei has reportedly demonstrated an LTE network operating at speeds up to 50Mbps on a Shanghai Maglev train traveling at 430km/hour. It has also set up two LTE trial networks in Shanghai. Worldwide, the company has won orders for base-station equipment for 60 LTE networks, 14 of them already in commercial operation.
In May, Dawning Information Industry’s Nebulae supercomputer at China’s National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen hit 1.27 petaflops, putting it in second place after the Cray Jaguar on TOP500’s list of top supercomputers. The Nebulae uses Intel Xeon 5650 CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPUs. See “The soul of a sino-supercomputer,” by Rick Merritt in EE Times, June 14, 2010, for details: <www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200101/
Now it looks like the strikes at Japanese-owned factories in China earlier this year were the politically correct (from the Chinese point of view) advance guard of serious labor reform that may result in the legalization of employee-led bargaining and a recognized right to strike.
“Travel a lot?”
“Are you kidding? I was in Tokyo last month.”
“How was it?”
“Japan is a disaster. The population is aging, prices are declining, manufacturing jobs are disappearing, and the government is paralyzed.”
“I read about that every day. What’s it like on the ground? I haven’t been there in a long time.”
“Tokyo? New restaurants and office towers everywhere you look. Apartment towers where you don’t remember them. More open space and greenery in the new developments.”
“And lower prices?”
“A lot lower. Japanese policymakers simply cannot find a way out of deflation.”
“So everything’s better and cheaper than it was. You’re short then?”
“I’m not invested at all. The yen is at its highest level in 15 years.”
“Because the economy is grossly mismanaged and the country has no future?”
“I’ll short the yen the day they start borrowing in dollars.”
“Would they do that? Would they need to do that?”
“It’s a democracy, isn’t it? Run by elected politicians. Odds are, they’ll bankrupt themselves and then go looking for more money to borrow overseas. And someone will lend it to them. Then they’ll be cooked. Like Greece, or the Asian Financial Crisis. Only it’s not happening next week.”
“You’re not short Japanese government bonds?”
“Are you crazy? The Chinese are buying JGBs. Trillions of yen worth.”
“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards…. China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”
– Guan Jianzhong, Chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, in the Financial Times
The Top 20 in Dagong’s “Sovereign Credit Rating Report of 50 Countries in 2010” (7.13.10) are: Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Netherlands, China (#10), Germany, Saudi Arabia, United States (#13), South Korea, Japan, Britain, France, Belgium, Chile, and South Africa. (Source: www.dagongcredit.com.)
It’s a Sony. It hasn’t reinvented the iPad before Apple, but Sony’s NEX-5 mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera takes a concept pioneered by Panasonic and Olympus to a level that is likely to force a response from Canon, Nikon, other Japanese camera makers, and Samsung.
14.2MP image sensor, sweep panorama, high-quality stills, full HD video for home and Web use, smallest and lightest of the genre, fits in a coat pocket, with multiple dedicated lenses and adapters for the rest. A bestseller in Japan, where it is taking bites out of the SLR market. The most frequently heard complaint is that the video is not cinema-quality.
There are plenty of reviews online. Our point here is that the digital-camera market is evolving far beyond the point-and-shoot cameras that had “more than enough [5] megapixels” a few years ago, combining photos, video, innovative optics, and networking.
After a brief flirtation with The Wrong Stuff by budget-slashing know-nothings in the DPJ [Democratic Party of Japan], Japan’s scientific establishment is reasserting itself. The return of the Hayabusa [“Peregrine Falcon”] spacecraft from the Asteroid Belt was a big help, raising both national pride and hopes for an expanding aerospace business.
Powered by ion engines developed by NEC, Hayabusa was launched in 2003, intercepted the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, made a series of soft landings, and then returned to Earth. The return was delayed by technical problems, but the ion engines saved the mission. The re-entry capsule landed in Australia in June, hopefully with useful samples from the asteroid’s surface. The contents of the sample containers are being investigated.
NEC and Aerojet are now looking into the possibility of supplying ion propulsion systems to the U.S. and Japanese aerospace markets. Japan is planning to launch Hayabusa-2 by 2015.
In May, Japan launched a rocket carrying the Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter and IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun), a small satellite designed to test a 200-square-meter solar sail embedded with thin-film solar panels. The sail was successfully deployed in June. Akatsuki is scheduled to reach Venus in December.
Later this decade, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) hopes to launch a solar-powered mission to Jupiter using a solar sail, thin-film solar panels, and ion engines.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the destroyer USS John S. McCain and aircraft carrier USS George Washington arrived at Danang earlier this month for joint maneuvers on the 15th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, and to underscore America’s support for Southeast Asian states in their dispute with China over control of the South China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a similar point in July at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi. China was not amused.
The U.S. and South Korea have also held their largest joint military exercises in three decades this summer following the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, presumably by a North Korean torpedo. The China Daily commented: “What will Americans feel if the Chinese or Russian military travel across the ocean to hold their exercises in the high seas not far from the coast of Florida, New York, or California?” They could ask Clint Eastwood about that.
It’s not exactly The End of History.
Our Asia Stealth Editor is an analyst and writer with experience in consulting, journalism, and investment from Sri Lanka to Sakhalin. He has lived and worked in Japan and Korea for almost 30 years. He currently works for a government agency that frowns on employees expressing their own opinions.
Copyright 2010 Strategic News Service. Redistribution prohibited without written permission.
I want to thank our Asia Stealth Editor for taking the time to cast a new light on high-flying Samsung, the Japanese drag-a-wing economic story, Hyundai’s solar move, and other fascinating views we wouldn’t get from the Western press.
He and I often think along similar lines, with sometimes uncanny result. Last night, before reading his copy, I circled a bizarre headline in the Financial Times, clearly written by someone not thinking on all cylinders: “Yen Rises After Weak Japan Growth Data.”
What? Where I come from, weak economic performance usually leads to a weak currency (unless you are the U.S.). The real headline should have been: “What are the rest of us missing about Japan?”
We’ll come back to this later.
Thank you also to SNS Managing Editor Sally Anderson, for making it all work just right.
Your comments are always welcome.
Sincerely,
Mark R. Anderson CEO
FiReGlobal : West Coast 2010
Second annual FiReGlobal : West Coast conference, November 11, 2010, at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, Seattle:
To register, go to: www.futureinreview.com/global/wc/
Ninth annual Future in Review (FiRe) conference, May 24-27, 2011, at the Montage Laguna Beach Hotel, California:
To register, go to: www.futureinreview.com
Hear the latest NPR interview with Mark Anderson, “Is Microsoft in Trouble?” at:
To arrange for a speech by Mark Anderson on subjects in technology and economics, or to schedule a strategic review of your company, email mark@stratnews.com.
For inquiries about SNS Events and/or Sponsorship opportunities, please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris (“SAM”), SNS Programs Director, at sam@stratnews.com or 435-649-3645.
If SNS is a competitive weapon, shouldn’t all of your employees have it? Email mark@stratnews.com for details on SNS Site Licenses.
» SNS Media
“SNS iNews is a terrific idea.” – Peter Petre, Author and Past Sr. Editor, FORTUNE magazine
Are you an AORTA (Always On RealTime Access) member of SNS? Use SNS iNews™ to stay in touch, in real time, with what your fellow members and FiRe Thought Leaders are achieving – and then help them get there.
Click here for the current iNews digest: www.snsinews.com
(For ID and password assistance, email scott@stratnews.com)
www.tapsns.com/media/nydinner2009/nyd-dinner-2009-predictions.mp3
(All rates $USD)
If you are not currently an SNS subscriber, the SNS newsletter has been sent to you for a one-month trial. If you would like a one-year subscription to SNS, the current rate is $595, which includes approximately 48 issues per year, plus special industry alerts and related materials; two years are $995. Premium Subscriptions, which include passworded access to additional materials on the SNS website, are $895 per year. Subscriptions can be purchased, upgraded, or renewed at our secure website, at www.stratnews.com. Contact Scott Schramke, scott@stratnews.com, for subscription assistance.
UPGRADE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION TO PREMIUM LEVEL for $300 per year, and enjoy email access to our FiRe Conference speakers through our new service, SNS Interactive News (SNS iNews™), along with other Premium benefits. After logging in to your Account, go to: www.tapsns.com/orders/?page=account.
VOLUME CORPORATE SUBSCRIPTION RATES: More than half-price savings, for up to 10 members: $2950. Additional members: $295.
SMALL COMPANY SITE LICENSE (for companies with fewer than 10 employees): Deep discount (far less than half price), for up to 10 members: $1495. Additional members: $295.
TEACHERS’ GROUP RATE (five teachers): $295.
STUDENT and INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST RATE: $295 per year.
» May I Share This Newsletter?
If you are aware of others who would like to receive this service, please forward this message to them, with a cc: to Mark Anderson at sns@stratnews.com; they will automatically receive a free one-month pilot subscription.
ANY OTHER UNAUTHORIZED REDISTRIBUTION IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW.
» About the Strategic News Service
SNS is the most accurate predictive letter covering the computer and telecom industries. It is personally read by the top managers at companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, Sun, Google, Yahoo!, Ericsson, Telstra, and China Mobile, as well as by leading financial analysts at the world’s top investment banks and venture capital funds, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Kleiner Perkins, Venrock, Warburg Pincus, and 3i. It is regularly quoted in top industry publications such as BusinessWeek, WIRED, Barron’s, Fortune, PC Magazine, ZDNet, Business 2.0, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.
Email sent to SNS may be reprinted, unless you indicate that it is not to be.
Mark Anderson is CEO of the Strategic News Service. He is the founder of two software companies and of the Washington Technology Industry Association “Fast Pitch” Forum, Washington’s premier software investment conference; and has participated in the launch of many software startups. He regularly appears on the CNN World News, CNBC and CNBC Europe, Reuters TV, the BBC, Wall Street Review/KSDO, and National Public Radio programs. He is a member of the Merrill Lynch Technology Advisory Board, and is an advisor and/or investor in OVP Ventures, Ignition Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, the UCSD Calit2 Laboratory, the Global Advisory Council of the mPedigree Network (Ghana), SwedeTrade, The Family Circle (Europe), and the Australian American Leadership Dialogue.
On the evening of September 22nd, Mark will moderate a panel on Cloud Computing for the MIT Forum, in Seattle. * On October 6th, Mark will keynote the 25th Anniversary meeting of the Puget Sound Venture Club, in Seattle. * From October 26th to 28th, he will be hosting panels at the third annual Family Office Circle meeting on Cyberwar, the North American Economy, and Mobile IT, in Heidelberg, Germany. * On November 11th, Mark will host the second annual FiReGlobal : West Coast Conference, at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, in Seattle. * On December 9th, he will be hosting the sixth annual SNS Annual Predictions Dinner, at the Waldorf = Astoria Hotel, in New York.
Copyright 2010, Strategic News Service LLC.
“Strategic News Service,” “SNS,” “Future in Review,” “FiRe,” and “SNS Project Inkwell” are all registered service marks of Strategic News Service LLC.
ISSN 1093-8494
|
Recent Issuesscott2022-09-20T16:01:24-07:00
SNS: Asia Letter, Q2 2010: Tipping Points
