(1) Aries Poon, Loretta Chao and Yukari Iwatani Kane, Factory Blast Roils Tech Supply Chain: China's Hon Hai Closes Product Polishing Workshops; Preliminary Report Blames Combustible Dust. Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576340742638224326.html#ixzz1NI3HgvZf
Note: Go straight to the graphic, which caption includes
mote (n): "a small particle: SPECK"
www.m-w.com
(2) Kathrin Hille, Truckloads of Notebooks Mark First Step of Long March INland; Rising costs are driving computer makers to China's hinterland. Financial Times, Mar 24, 2011 (title in print).
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/433041d0-8568-11e0-ae32-00144feabdc0.html
Quote:
"One-third of the world’s iPads are being made in Chengdu, with the remainder shipped out of Shenzhen" (all by contractor Foxconn)
"Mr [Oliver] Ahrens[, president of Acer China] says that this link can help cut transport time to Europe, Acer’s most important market, by two weeks. Shipping out of Shanghai takes 24-28 days, while rail freight out of Chongqing is expected to take 12-14 days.
Note:
(a) The first sentence syas, "This week, lorries will pick up several thousand Acer computers."
I live in Boston and read American edition, whose first sentence replace "lorries" with "trucks" (as well as "labour" with "labor" of course).
(b) "Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Asustek, the world’s number one, three and six PC brands by shipments, chose Chongqing. Dell and Lenovo, ranking second and fourth, picked Chengdu."
Reagrding worldwide PC shipment by units in 1Q11, the rankings of IDC and Gartner are different with respect to No 2 and No 3. In IDC ranking, Dell and Acer were second and third, whereas Gartner placed Acer on top of Dell. The difference in both rankings were not negligible, but between 1 and 2%.
That is PC. In the LAPTOP segment of PC, Dell is No. 4
(c) Liangjiang New Area (重庆) 两江新区
http://www.liangjiang.org/article-1262-1.html
(地图)
(d) Duisburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duisburg
(e) Antwerp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp
(in northern Belgium; section 1.1 Origin of the name)
(3) Justin Scheck and Ben Worthen, Dell Inc. Lowers Its Sights For Gadgets, Consumers. Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704740604576301332458865882.html
(Dell the company "consistently has failed to produce such hits at a time when gadgets are all the rage. Mr. Dell pulled the plug on a different set of sleek laptops [Adamo, a luxury laptop costing $2,000] earlier this year. Before that, he killed a series of music players and an online music store before they ever went on sale. Forays into smartphones and tablet [Streak] computers have borne little fruit.")
Note: The print, but not the online, edition includes several graphics, the first of which is a bar chart:
"Major Players
Market share for world-wide consumer laptop shipments in Q4 2010
H-P 20.8%
Acer 14.2%
Toshiba 11.6%
Dell 10.4%
Asus 8.3%
Lenovo 6.7%
Apple 6.6%
Sony 6.5%
Samsung 5.0%
Fitsiju 1.3%
Others 8.6%
Source: IDC"
(4) Robert Guy Matthew, For Global Steel Industry, China Poses Guessing Game. Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704083904576335630184298602.html
("China is the world's largest market for steel. Yet the country's flawed statistics system presents a problem for steelmakers: No one knows exactly how much steel China produces or consumes")
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