Mio Technology Ltd (宇達電通), one of the world's top three portable navigation device (PND) suppliers, yesterday said it has added Best Buy Co to its sales channel list, paving the way for the company's expansion into the US market.
"Our products have made their way into Best Buy [stores] starting this quarter," company president Samuel Wang said.
The addition of Best Buy will complement the maker's first US sales channel, Circuit City Stores Inc, making Mio products more accessible to consumers there, Wang told reporters at the Computex trade fair yesterday, where the company is holding its largest exhibition to date.
Mio Technology may add more major US sales channels, including Costco Wholesale Group and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, in the second half of the year, Wang said.
Mio was the fourth-largest brand in the US' PND market with an 8 percent share in the first quarter of the year, trailing behind Garmin International Inc's 50 percent, TomTom NV's 22 percent and Magellan Navigation Inc's 12 percent, Wang said, citing figures from Canalys, a market research company.
Mio's share of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, the world's largest PND market, is more impressive. The company ranked No. 2 in the first quarter with a 20 percent share, after acquiring the US-based Navman brand in March.
TomTom was the top brand with a 36 percent share of the EMEA market, with Garmin ranking third at 14 percent, Wang said.
The company is also gearing up to strengthen its foothold in China.
Although the Chinese market is still small, with sales expected to reach only 800,000 units this year -- lower than the 2 million units expected to be sold in Spain, for instance -- Mio Technology is optimistic about opportunities across the Strait. The company sells about 20,000 units a month in China, translating to a market share of about 30 percent by year's end, he said.
"We are working with Chinese carmakers to bundle our products. The outcome has been good so far," he said.
Meanwhile, Billy Ho (
"This is a big step considering [Mio] just moved into the field in 2003," he said.
He said that handheld products, including PNDs, will account for 40 percent of MiTAC's total revenues this year, up from last year's 30 percent.
Sales from IT products -- which include servers, storage devices and personal computers -- will drop to 60 percent from last year's 70 percent, Ho said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to