The nation's iPod fans now have an easier way to bring home an iPod Shuffle, as Apple's Taiwan branch has teamed up with the 7-Eleven convenience store giant to market the red-hot gadget, which was officially launched yesterday.
"We had hundreds of inquiry calls yesterday alone, as soon as we started selling the product in our outlets," said Vivian Hsu (
The retailer expects the first batch of 500 units of the iPod Shuffle, the new model of Apple Computer Inc's best-selling iPod music player family, allocated for sale in 250 outlets in the nation's metropolitan areas to be sold out in two or three days, she said.
This is the second promotional partnership between the information technology and retail giants after the two parties received enthusiastic feedback from consumers during a promotion of the iPod Mini last August.
The retailer said it would seek to continue the sale but were uncertain about the quantity available for the next wave, given a shortage of supplies of the popular consumer electronics gadget after it hit the market.
The pint-size, flash memory-based digital music players, which can hold 120 songs or 240 songs, depending on a storage capability of 512 megabytes or 1 gigabyte, are priced at NT$3,600 and NT$5,400, respectively.
In a bid to downplay the shortage, Apple said it had seen stronger demand than supply globally after the rollout last month and it's difficult to predict when the tight supply will stabilize, according to an official at an Apple Taiwan branch who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Sales of Apple's sleekly designed iPod music player had boomed to over 10 million units at year-end, since its launch in 2001. Its great popularity has in turn benefited the company's Taiwanese assemblers and component suppliers, including Inventec Appliances Corp (英華達) and Asustek Computers Inc (華碩電腦), that make iPod and iPod Shuffle, respectively.
"The shipment of iPod Shuffles is estimated to contribute to 5 percent of Asustek's revenue for last month [of around NT$26.2 billion]," said Jenny Lai (
Asustek is expected to ship 5 million units with a minimum margin of 5 percent, which may make up 4 percent of the company's annual sales this year, Lai said.
In light of sales of the product heating up, the shipment estimates may need upward adjustments, she said.
Another market watcher suggested that investors can set their sights on Apple's upstream component suppliers, who enjoy much better margins than the downstream assemblers.
For instance, Acon Advanced-Connectek Inc (連展科技), which supplies portable batteries for iPod music players could enjoy margins as high as 60 percent, said Stevie Chou (周奇賢), vice president of the research division of SinoPac Securities Corp (建華證券).
Apple reportedly may increase its purchases from Taiwan suppliers this year by a quarter to $5 billion as it boosts sales, according to a Chinese-language newspaper report.
Acon shares closed up 3.05 percent at NT$16.9 while Asustek closed marginally down 0.56 percent at NT$88.5 on the TAIEX yesterday.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS