No luck if you are an employee of AU Optronics and have been yelled at by your boss. There are no paper towels in the restrooms to wipe your tears!

In a drive to become more environmentally friendly, the world’s third largest LCD maker has stopped providing paper.

You’ll have to dry your tears under a hand dryer!

The company is also moving towards manufacturing display panels that consume less power. At the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, Chief Executive HB Chen said by the end of 2011 almost all notebooks will have displays illuminated
by LED backlight, which saves power.

But will consumers pay a premium for these products?

Chen said: “We try to make cheaper products. No question of letting consumers pay a premium.”

Fujitsu is going green with a vengeance. Executive Vice President Chiaki Ito said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms summit that there is a business opportunity in making products that help cut carbon emissions.

Q: Will the technology sector use more or less energy a decade
from now?

I see the computer side of the industry using less energy due to
advances in semiconductor and virtualization technology. I am not
pessimistic. Consumption of energy can be restrained.

On the other hand, the network side which will consume more
energy as demand for and use of bandwidth increases — heavy
traffic will lead to higher energy consumption.

In the IP (intellectual property) world, everything is handled by
routers and switches. If you replace those current electrical
routers and switches with optical ones, that can save energy.

Q: Are consumers willing to pay a premium for environmentally
friendly goods?

It’s a choice consumers should make. For instance now many people
use cellphones as a substitute for a PC to check mails etc. This
reduces the consumption of energy.

English or Japanese?

Chiaki Ito can speak both in English and in Japanese. But when the first question was asked in English, he said:

I can speak in English as well as Japanese. But when I have to
answer complex and sophisticated questions, I will switch to
Japanese. This one’s a complex one.

All non-Japanese speaking reporters in the room scrambled to get
hold of a translation module.

eAccess Chairman Sachio Semmoto - a veteran in the Japanese telecommunications industry — is quite critical about the iPhone. Here’s what he has to say about Apple’s cult touchscreen phone:

Apple has sold about 4-5 million iPhone handsets and, to my eye, that is a failure. Look at how many handsets Nokia and Motorola have sold. The problem was in choosing the carrier. AT&T is not a broadband focused service provider.

If I meet Steve Jobs, I will tell him: ‘You have made a wrong choice. You should work with eMobile, eAccess’ wireless service provider’.

Semmoto went on to compare the iPhone with HTC’s new smartphone
Diamond.*

He said HTC’s Chief Executive Peter Chou is the only guy who can
compete with Steve Jobs.

Are you reading this, Mr Jobs?

*eAccess recently unveiled a phone made by Taiwan’s HTC, the world’s biggest smartphone maker

Memory chipmaker Qimonda’s Chief Executive Kin Wah Loh says his company does not have any rivals. He likes to call them “friendly competitors” instead.

This is what the CEO of the loss making DRAM manufacturer has to say about his “friendly competitors” at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo:

• On Samsung, the world’s largest memory chip maker: They go about town saying how big and mighty they are. They are very successful and nobody’s denying that. However, they dominated the DRAM industry and now they are down to 25 percent.
• On a sudden power outage at one of Hynix’s DRAM plant in China: “Fair luck. Life’s like that. Get that fixed as soon as possible!”

(Shares of rival memory chipmakers in Japan and Taiwan rose on hopes the disruption would reduce worldwide DRAM supply and boost prices in a depressed market. Makers of DRAM chips worldwide have been mired in a steep market downturn for more than a year, with prices of some key chips falling more than 90 percent since early 2007.)

• On the silver lining for DRAM companies: Good news is that chip prices are going up. Good news is that there is a balance between supply and demand. Bad news is that it’s not enough for us to make sufficient money.
• On what would be the next hot thing in technology: Any company that can combine things concisely to give me more healthy and quality time. As I see it, it will not be a small company. It could be the transformation of Microsoft and Google together. You have the software capability and you have the search capability… that would be a great combination.
•  On which stock would he put his money on: Renewable energy and biotech startups.

High Tech Computer Corp,  the world’s top smartphone maker, said it might be the first company to produce phones based on Google’s mobile software platform Android.   

“We’re still working on this new product and can’t say much. We’ll have the product by the end of this year. We should probably be the first from what efforts we’re putting in,” Chief Executive Peter Chou said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo.

 Android phones, using a Linux-based open source operating system, will allow users to tweak and customise their own user interface, differing from traditional Windows or Symbian based handsets.

    HTC, the world’s top smartphone maker, has in the last two years transformed itself from a pure contract manufacturer to a branded mobile phone company, and is betting on its newly launched Diamond smartphone to boost sales.

    In India and China, where the mobile phone industry is growing at a scorching pace, the company is aiming for a growth of 100 percent and about 70 percent, respectively, this year.

    When asked to pick an undervalued stock, he thought for a while and then said HTC.

    “There are a lot of companies in the world. I’m so focused single-mindedly on HTC. I think the HTC stock is undervalued.” he said.

What does Yoichi Wada, president of Japanese gaming software company Square Enix talk about over dinner these days? M&A, of course.

“I think every company is undergoing negotiations. We have dinners every night,” Wada said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo.

“We face competition not only from Japanese videogame companies but from game companies worldwide. We also see some new players from outside the videogame industry coming in,” he said.

Square Enix, creator of blockbuster game series including “Dragon Quest”, “Final Fantasy” and “Kingdom Hearts”, was created in 2003 through a merger of two leading Japanese game makers.

 Wada said, “It may be a business alliance or it may be us taking a stake in others, but we need to go beyond traditional Square Enix.”