Flash memory prices rebound as makers introduce larger-capacity chips www.asia.nikkei.com

TOKYO -- Buoyed by a significant demand increase as Chinese and Taiwanese smartphone makers introduce products with larger memory capacity, prices of NAND flash memory chips have rebounded significantly.

The benchmark bulk sales price of NAND flash memory products rose a significant 22% in June compared to a month ago.

Prices of 64 gigabit, multi-level cell-type NAND chips rose in June to about $2.75 per unit, the first rebound in two years and nine months. Such units are sometimes traded at over $3.

Prices of triple-level cell chips, which have higher data capacity, have risen to around $2 and are continuing to rise in July.

The significant spike in NAND flash memory prices is attributed to increased demand from some Chinese and Taiwanese smartphone makers, which are introducing products with more memory capacity.

TOKYO -- Buoyed by a significant demand increase as Chinese and Taiwanese smartphone makers introduce products with larger memory capacity, prices of NAND flash memory chips have rebounded significantly.

The benchmark bulk sales price of NAND flash memory products rose a significant 22% in June compared to a month ago.

Prices of 64 gigabit, multi-level cell-type NAND chips rose in June to about $2.75 per unit, the first rebound in two years and nine months. Such units are sometimes traded at over $3.

Prices of triple-level cell chips, which have higher data capacity, have risen to around $2 and are continuing to rise in July.

The significant spike in NAND flash memory prices is attributed to increased demand from some Chinese and Taiwanese smartphone makers, which are introducing products with more memory capacity.

Vivo Communication Technology and Xiaomi, both Chinese smartphone makers, for example, recently introduced handsets whose internal storage is more than double that of their respective previous products. Such moves have boosted demand to levels exceeding memory manufacturers' expectations.

British market research firm Technavio expects the world's total NAND flash memory shipments to grow 30% in 2016 from a year ago to over 10 billion units.

The market is rising due also to declining supply, caused by a suspension of operations at a Chinese semiconductor plant of South Korea's Samsung Electronics following an explosion at a power substation in Xian, China, in mid-June.

The spike in demand for flash memory chips used in smartphones is also beginning to affect DRAMs used in PCs. Some memory makers including Micron Technology of the U.S. have switched their PC-use chip production lines to production of smartphone chips from April to June, straining supply of PC-use DRAMs, industry sources said.

As a result, prices of 4-gigabit DDR3 units are currently centered around $1.78 per unit, up about 11% from levels in May. Prices of next-generation DDR4 units also rose about 10% to around $1.8.

Another factor contributing to increased demand for memory chips is the increasing number of cyberattacks on corporate servers, which have resulted in a number of high-profile cases of customer information leaks in recent years. Forced to introduce additional security measures, which tend to weigh on computer performance, more companies are increasing the number of DRAMs in their systems to alleviate performance slowdown, another industry source said.

Tesla: Elon Musk reveals latest 'masterplan' www.bbc.com

Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, has published the second part of his self-titled "masterplan".
He said Tesla would be branching out into creating a "solar-roof-with-battery product" that people can have fitted to their homes.
He wants the Tesla electric car range to cover all types of ground vehicles, specifically buses and lorries.
And once the cars have full autonomous driving capability, Mr Musk said Tesla would allow owners to add their cars to a shared fleet, meaning the vehicles can be making money for their owners when they are not using them.
Mr Musk had teased the publication of the plan on Twitter for several days, recently saying he'd pulled an all-nighter in order to finish it.
His ambition, he wrote, was to "accelerate the advent of sustainable energy".
"We must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse.
"Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better."
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, has published the second part of his self-titled "masterplan".
He said Tesla would be branching out into creating a "solar-roof-with-battery product" that people can have fitted to their homes.
He wants the Tesla electric car range to cover all types of ground vehicles, specifically buses and lorries.
And once the cars have full autonomous driving capability, Mr Musk said Tesla would allow owners to add their cars to a shared fleet, meaning the vehicles can be making money for their owners when they are not using them.
Mr Musk had teased the publication of the plan on Twitter for several days, recently saying he'd pulled an all-nighter in order to finish it.
His ambition, he wrote, was to "accelerate the advent of sustainable energy".
"We must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse.
"Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better."
Autopilot controversy
(FILES) This file photo taken on December 2, 2015 shows Elon Musk, CEO of US automotive and energy storage company Tesla, presents his outlook on climate change at the Paris-Sorbonne University in Paris.Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES
The masterplan comes comes at a time when Mr Musk is facing criticism for the roll-out of Tesla's Autopilot feature, in which cars autonomously travel along motorways, changing lanes and speeding up or down in keeping with traffic.
US road safety regulators are investigating whether Autopilot was at fault in a crash which left one man, the driver, dead. The software appears to have failed to spot a white lorry driving across the Tesla's path.
Mr Musk stressed in his masterplan that Autopilot was in beta mode, and that all drivers are warned of that.
He wrote: "It would no more make sense to disable Tesla's Autopilot, as some have called for, than it would to disable autopilot in aircraft, after which our system is named.
"It is also important to explain why we refer to Autopilot as 'beta'. This is not beta software in any normal sense of the word. Every release goes through extensive internal validation before it reaches any customers.
"It is called beta in order to decrease complacency and indicate that it will continue to improve (Autopilot is always off by default). Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed."
Uber competitor?
Mr Musk was also under pressure to explain the reasoning behind Tesla's purchase of SolarCity, a solar-power company that many considered to have been struggling. Mr Musk was its chief executive, and some investors said Tesla's purchase was essentially bailing out the ailing SolarCity.
However, Mr Musk rationalised his thinking by saying his vision of sustainable energy in our homes required the two companies to be joined.
"We can't do this well if Tesla and SolarCity are different companies, which is why we need to combine and break down the barriers inherent to being separate companies."
Mr Musk also seemed to suggest his company would one day compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft for personal transportation.
Once the cars had achieved full, safe autonomy, he said, a service would be set up that allowed owners to make their cars part of a fleet others could summon via an app.
In cities where there were too few Tesla owners to satisfy demand, Mr Musk said Tesla would "operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are".
Shares in Tesla were marginally up during out-of-hours trading.

US files lawsuit against Malaysian state fund www3.nhk.or.jp

The US Department of Justice has taken a legal action to seize more than one billion dollars in assets from a Malaysian state fund, suspected of involvement in corruption.

Court papers filed by the Department in Los Angles allege that the money from the fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad or 1MDB, was misappropriated and went to Malaysian government officials and their families through several shell companies. The papers also allege that the money was spent on buying real estate and art pieces.

The state fund was set up in 2009 with the encouragement of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, but it was found to have large debts. It has also been alleged that a huge amount of funds were siphoned from the fund to the prime minister.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Wednesday that the funds were stolen and laundered through US financial institutions.

The Malaysian government has already closed its investigation into the case, claiming no wrongdoing took place. But authorities in Singapore and Switzerland are still investigating.

Lufthansa cuts profit forecast www.bbc.com

Lufthansa has cut its full-year profit target following a sharp decline in long-haul bookings to Europe.

Germany's biggest airline blamed "terrorist attacks in Europe" and "greater political and economic uncertainty".

It cut its full-year profit forecast for 2016 from "slightly above previous year" to "below previous year".

British Airways owner IAG and Easyjet have also issued profits warnings in recent weeks.

And earlier this month the International Air Transport Association (IATA) saiddemand for air travel had been hit.

"After a very strong start to the year, demand growth is slipping back toward more historic levels,"said IATA's chief executive, Tony Tyler.

"A combination of factors are likely behind this more moderated pace of demand growth. These include continuing terrorist activity and the fragile state of the global economy.

"Neither bode well for travel demand. And the shocks of Istanbul and the economic fallout of the Brexit vote make it difficult to see an early uptick," he added.

'Greater uncertainty'

In its statement, Lufthansa said advance bookings, in particular on long-haul routes to Europe had "declined significantly", since it made its original profit forecast in March.

It also said it would now increase the number of seats it offers by 5.4% this year instead of its previous target of 6%.

Immediately after last month's vote by the UK to leave the European Union, BA's parent company IAG said the decision could dent profits.

Meanwhile, rival Easyjet said the vote meant "additional economic and consumer uncertainty is likely this summer" and it expected revenues to fall as a result.

US: No change to efforts to seek self-driving tech www3.nhk.or.jp

The top US traffic safety regulator has stressed there's no change to the government's stance to help accelerate the development of self-driving technology, despite a fatal accident involving a self-driving car.

The head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Mark Rosekind, was speaking at a symposium in San Francisco on Wednesday.

He said no one incident will derail the US government from its mission to improve safety on the roads by pursuing new lifesaving technologies.

In May, a Tesla sports car running in "Autopilot" mode collided with a tractor trailer, killing the car driver.

The US Department of Transportation has announced a plan to spend about 4 billion dollars on experiments in the next 10 years.

Japan stocks rise on $186bn stimulus bets www.bbc.com

Japanese stocks are rising on bets the government will unveil a stimulus package that could be double the size initially expected.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is looking to compile a package of at least 20 trillion yen ($186bn; £141bn) according to the Kyodo News agency.

The world's third-largest economy is still trying to emerge from deflation.

Both the benchmark Nikkei 225 and broader Topix indexes rose 1% at the open.

In the currency market, the Japanese yen fell to a six-week low against the US dollar.

Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.6% while New Zealand stocks also gained 0.6%.

South Korea's Kospi is trading flat.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng is 0.6% and the Shanghai Composite is up 0.2%.

Malaysia's share market is the only one trading lower after US authorities said the country's state investment fund 1MDB misappropriated billions of dollars.

Putin wants balance between stronger ruble and Russian budget www.rt.com

Bank of England considers issuing its own digital currency www.rt.com

‘There’s No More Money:’ Medvedev Faces Russia's Economic Woes With Austerity Plan www.themoscowtimes.com

Volkswagen profit tops forecast, but takes another dieselgate hit www.reuters.com