Taiwanese Dopod International Corp (多普達), a smartphone vendor initially based in Shanghai, launched its first mobile phone on its home turf yesterday aiming to quickly grab a share of the nation's market.
"We feel the timing is right to introduce Dopod-branded phones to the Taiwan market, which is maturing," said Jack Tong (董俊良), president of Dopod.
Tong made the remarks during the launch of the company's first handset here, the Dopod 0565.
The Dopod, 0565 embedded with a Microsoft operating system, offers a few computer functions such as e-mail and Web browsing.
Dopod, a company controlled by Cher Wang (王雪紅), chairwoman of the nation's biggest smartphone contract maker High Tech Computer Corp (宏達電), will heavily rely on High Tech for phone supplies for the time being.
High Tech also supplies handsets to T-Mobile International and Orange SA, a handset arm of France Telecom SA.
Dopod, the nation's second handset vendor focusing on smartphones after Mitac International Corp (神達電腦), which owns the Mio brand, plans to sell 150,000 mobile phones by the end of this year.
Dopod plans to launch three to four models on the local market over the next few months, targeting business travelers and technology-crazed youngsters.
However, Peggy Chang (張意珮), an analyst with research house Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所), said such niche hansets have not won widespread acceptance in most part of the world including Taiwan.
"Only Western European mobile phone users show a strong appetite for smartphones," Chang said.
Mobile phone retailers only purchased 600,000 units in Taiwan, she said.
"I don't expect the volume to grow significantly this year. Although Sony Ericsson's P900 became a hot number after its launch, it should be seen as the exception," she said, adding that Sony Eric-sson's excellent handset design attracted many consumers.
Rising handset inventory, mostly in China, will also squeeze demand for high-end mobile phones including smartphones, she said.
Chang expects the huge inventory in handsets will not be reduced until October.
Dopod International Corp's market launch here comes after more than two years of operation in China.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained