Local manufacturers are expected to manufacture one in every two game consoles sold worldwide next year, a government-funded research body said yesterday.
The report, by the Market Information Center of the Institute for Information Industry, estimated that Taiwanese tech companies will produce US$1.37 billion worth of consoles this year, which represents 25.71 percent of the world market.
Taiwan's hardware manufacturers are producing the most popular consoles including Microsoft Corp's Xbox, made by Wistron Inc (
Orders from the top three vendors have skyrocketed in the second half of this year, due to price competition. In the first six months local manufacturers pumped out 1.33 million consoles worth US$198.5 million. That figure is expected to jump sixfold by the end of the year to 8.39 million units worth US$1.17 billion by year end.
MIC market analysts see good prospects for local manufacturers next year as the popular brands continue to battle out their price war. They therefore need to find OEM contract suppliers that can enable them to cut production costs, the report said.
According to the report, the local business model of receiving orders in Taiwan, and making deliveries from low-cost production facilities in China should continue.
Taiwan's manufacturers look set to win big as the size of the game console market continues to increase. Strategy Analytics, a global research and consulting company, predicts that by the end of this year Sony will sell 26.3 million PS2 units worldwide, or 63 percent of total game consoles.
This year 150,000 PS2 consoles have been sold in Taiwan, and Sony expects to sell a further 50,000 before March next year.
Sony has led the market with almost half the world market share until 2000, rising to over 50 percent last year.
Cumulatively, Sony now has 72 percent of the market. Nintendo's GameCube comes in second with 16 percent and the Xbox trails at 12 percent, the Strategy Analytics report said.
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