Taiwanese mobile-phone makers' shipments grew by 9 percent during the fourth quarter of last year, year-on-year, due to aggressive promotion efforts made by local players, a government-fund research house said yesterday.
"The total shipment rose to 1.6 billion units in the last quarter as brand-name mobile phone vendors and operators gear up in selling handsets to local consumers in the traditional Lunar New Year shopping season," the Market Intelligence Center (MIC, 市場情報中心) said in a statement.
The production value, however, only increased by 5 percent to around NT$10.4 billion as stiff competition has eroded average selling prices, the research house added.
Looking ahead, MIC expected the growth momentum is expected to carry into this year, projecting that local cellular-phone makers will ship around 1.6 million units in the current quarter.
For the full year, Taiwanese companies are expected to ship a total of 6.2 million units as local brands plan to roll out more models this year in the face of international mobile-phone-vendors' competition in the saturated domestic market, MIC forecast.
In addition, the nation's personal digital-assistant (PDA) industry delivered record high shipment volume in the fourth quarter of last year, MIC said.
"Shipments grew 40.6 percent sequentially to reach 2.3 million units, representing a 57.4 percent year-on-year growth," the center said in a statement.
"Shipment value rose by 44.8 percent from approximately US$288 million in the third quarter of 2003 to NT$416 million in the fourth quarter, representing 23 percent year-on-year growth," it said.
The center said average selling prices (ASP) increased slightly from US$177 in the third quarter to US$184 in the fourth, after brand-name companies introduced high-end models. The center also attributed the rising ASP to a shortage of panel and passive components which drove up PDA costs.
For the whole of last year, Taiwan shipped approximately 6.3 million units, an increase of 52.9 percent from 4 million units a year ago.
The center said the share of PDA production outsourced to Taiwanese makers by international brandname vendors successively increased from quarter to quarter throughout last year.
"Taiwanese shipment share of the global PDA market grew from 33.4 percent in 2002 to 54.6 percent in 2003," it noted.
But market demand is expected to decrease in the first quarter of this year as the holiday demand subsides and new models are released, the center said.
"Furthermore, supply of components such as small and medium-sized TFT-LCD panels remains tight, and supplies for Taiwanese PDA makers will be limited as panel makers source more heavily to mobile phone and digital camera applications," it added.
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