Mobile-phone sales in China, the world's biggest wireless market by users, dropped almost a 10th in April because the SARS outbreak sapped demand, a government report released yesterday showed. Motorola Inc lost its leading position to rival Nokia Oyj.
Nokia, Ningbo Bird Co (
The April numbers are the first to reflect the full impact of SARS on China's cell-phone market, which is already suffering because of rising inventory and falling prices.
Motorola, which blamed SARS last week for its decision to cut its full-year profit forecast, sold 24 percent fewer global system for mobile communications, or GSM, phones in April than in March. The US company, the world's second-biggest mobile-phone maker, estimated vendors have 20 million unsold phones in China, almost a third of the country's annual sales.
"The fall in sales because of SARS shouldn't be too big a surprise for the market," said Lily Jap, an analyst at Nomura International (Hong Kong) Ltd. "The key question is how much sellers will allow price cuts to drive sales, especially of phones equipped with colored screens, in the second half."
Sales of GSM-based phones, China's dominant cellular standard, dropped 7.7 percent in April to 6.28 million units, according to the CCID report. By value, they dropped 13 percent to 9.63 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion). That implies the average price of a GSM phone, used by more than 95 percent of China's cell users, dropped 5.8 percent to 1,534 yuan.
TCL Mobile Communication Co, China's No. 2 domestic cell-phone maker, and Konka Group Co are among makers that dropped prices in April. Konka slashed prices of its C869 handset by 37 percent to 1,890 yuan.
Finland-based Nokia, the world's biggest handset maker, increased its share of China's GSM market to 15.3 percent in April from 13.4 percent in the previous month. Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola's fell to 14.1 percent from 17.2 percent, the CCID report said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS