Sony Communication Network Corp entered the crowded local ADSL market yesterday as part of their strategy to win a piece of Taiwan's rapidly growing demand for high-speed Internet access.
The company -- Sony Network Taiwan Ltd (
Sony began offering Japanese consumers Internet service in 1996 and currently has 1.7 million subscribers there.
In early August, a local think tank, the Market Intelligence Center (
Eyeing those numbers, Sony chose Taiwan as its first overseas market. "Taiwan is a open market for the telecommunications business, and we foresee an ongoing boom in Internet usage here," said Senji Yamamoto (
While So-net Taiwan will serve as an Internet service provider in the beginning, the company aims to become an Internet content provider in the future.
"Entertainment content, such as music, motion pictures and games, are what Sony Group is good at, therefore the synergy of the entire group will back up So-net's content service," Yamamoto said.
According to Yuichi Ejiri (
Ejiri said he hopes to attract 100,000 Internet access subcribers by March of next year, and 100,000 content users as well.
So-net Taiwan currently only provides Internet services in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung, which account for 80 percent of Internet users in Taiwan, he said.
A telecoms pundit, however, said So-net Taiwan chose these regions because of the its ties to KG Telecom.
"Although So-net uses Chung-hwa Telecom Co's (中華電信) ADSL lines for last mile installation, they depend on KG Telecom's [network] backbone for transmission," said Jack Hsu (徐瑞宏), an analyst at the Market Intelligence Center. KG Telecom only has transmission stations in these three regions, he said.
Hsu also expressed doubts about So-net's market share estimates. "So-net's publicity is not as well known as other providers in Taiwan, and 100,000 users would be a major feat for a new market entrant."
According to the center's broadband market forecast, Taiwan Fixed Network Co Ltd (
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by