ReportWire

Tag: Technolog

  • Amazon’s holiday sales event sees lower sales, group says

    Amazon’s holiday sales event sees lower sales, group says

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    NEW YORK — Amazon said Thursday its Prime members ordered more than 100 million items during a sales event this week that analysts are expecting to be a bellwether for the holiday shopping season.

    As expected, the Seattle-based e-commerce company did not share sales figures. Still, some third-party estimates offer clues on how consumers spent during the two-day discount event that ran on Tuesday and Wednesday.

    According to the data group Numerator, which tracked roughly 44,670 orders during the sale, the average order size clocked in at $46.68, $13 less than what it was during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event in July. Inflation also had an impact – 26% of shoppers passed on a deal because it wasn’t a necessity, Numerator said.

    Major retailers have been offering more holiday discounts this year and doing it much earlier than usual, aiming to offload excess goods and offer cash-strapped Americans better deals amid high inflation.

    Amazon’s discount event this week was the first time the company offered major sales to its Prime members twice in one year. Walmart has also been offering sales this week and has expanded its window for gift returns to between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, compared with last year’s return window of Nov. 1 to Jan. 24. Meanwhile, Target began offering holiday deals last week during a two-day discount event. The company declined to share its revenue from those sales.

    According to Salesforce, which analyzes online shopping data, the average online discount rate on Tuesday and Wednesday was roughly 21%, the deepest discount rate since the beginning of the pandemic outside of Cyber Week, the time between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

    But despite the deep discounts, consumers are still generally paying more than they did in the past two years due to high inflation. The average online selling price on Tuesday and Wednesday, for example, was up 8% compared to last year, and 17% compared to 2020, Salesforce said.

    Online spending in November and December is expected to hit $209.7 billion, a 2.5% jump from 2021, according to Adobe Analytics. That’s sluggish growth compared to last year’s gain of 8.6%.

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  • Japan to pay up to $320M for US company’s chip production

    Japan to pay up to $320M for US company’s chip production

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    TOKYO — Japan is providing a major U.S. chipmaker a subsidy of up to 46.6 billion yen ($322 million) to support its plan to produce advanced memory chips at a Hiroshima factory, the Japanese trade minister said Friday.

    The announcement to subsidize Micron Technology comes on the heels of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit in Japan as the two countries step up cooperation on expanding manufacturing and supply chains for critical materials.

    “I hope the deal will contribute to further expansion of cooperation between Japan and the United States in the area of semiconductors,” Japan’s Economy and Trade Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said.

    He said the government approved the deal Friday under a law related to economic security.

    Japan has set up its own fund to support semiconductor production, and Friday’s agreement is its third deal.

    During her trip to Asia this week, Harris met with Japanese officials and semiconductor company executives to seek greater cooperation in strengthening semiconductor development and production amid China’s growing influence.

    Micron was among the companies that participated in the meeting with Harris, along with Tokyo Electron, Nikon, Hitachi High-Tech Group, Fujitsu Ltd.

    Micron said in a statement it will use the subsidy to strengthen production capacity and speed up development of the company’s 1-beta DRAM — memory chips that are key to advanced data facilities — as well as technology for a 5G network upgrade and artificial intelligence.

    The United States is working to solidify its technology cooperation with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, while trying to increase its domestic semiconductor manufacturing, amid China’s own investment in computer chips.

    The deal Friday “symbolizes the investment and integration of our two economies and supply chains,” said U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who has been promoting economic security between the two allies. “And that will only accelerate from here forward.”

    Nishimura has stressed the U.S.-Japan alliance on semiconductors, energy and other areas.

    Japan was once a world leader in computer chip manufacturing, but its status has eroded over the last two decades, and the country is increasingly worried about falling behind.

    Japan has allocated 476 billion yen ($3.3 billion) in subsidies for a new factory in Japan’s southern prefecture of Kumamoto being built in a partnership between the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Sony Group and Denso Corp.

    Japan is also providing up to 92.9 billion yen ($644 million) to another facility in central Japan’s Mie prefecture jointly built by Western Digital Corp. and Kioxia Corp.

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