Samsung Electronics Co yesterday announced price cuts for its MP3 player series in a move aimed at competitively priced new iPod nanos.
The price of Samsung's YP-Z5 1GB model, which looks and feels similar to Apple Computer Inc's iPod nanos but boasts a longer battery life and larger screen, has been lowered to NT$4,400 (US$132) from NT$4,990.
The cost of the 2GB model has been reduced to NT$5,400 from NT$5,990, and the 4GB now sells at NT$7,000 down from NT$7,490.
These reduced price tags put the YP-Z5 on par with the new iPod nanos, which went on sale in local stores last week.
"We have to match the pricings of the iPod nanos to compete with them," David Li (李正祜), a supervisor at Samsung's Taiwan branch, told reporters at a product launch yesterday.
He said that Samsung's pricing strategy would have to reflect market conditions and that it would not take the lead in cutting prices further to boost sales.
Vendors are aggressively unveiling new digital music players, including the latest iPod shuffles, which will be available early next month.
The launches are expected to trigger a price war in December as vendors attempt to cash in on the Christmas shopping spree, Li said.
Samsung yesterday introduced two new MP3 players, including the K5 -- claimed to be the industry's first player to feature a set of compact speakers that slide out from the back of the device.
The T9, meanwhile, boasts a 1.8-inch liquid-crystal-display screen with 176 x 220 pixels, and is ideal for clear and sharp viewing of MPEG-4 video files.
For the first eight months of the year, Apple's iPods were the top selling music players in Taiwan in terms of sale value, followed by Samsung and Sony Corp respectively, according to statistics from GfK Marketing Services.
The total market size for the year will be 1 million units, up from last year's 870,000, vendors estimated.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six