High Tech Computer Corp (HTC, 宏達電), the world's biggest maker of handsets running on Microsoft Corp's operating system, yesterday debuted its first own-brand phone in Asia, which has been dubbed the iPhone killer.
The company introduced HTC Touch, a touch-screen phone using Windows Mobile 6.0, in Taipei yesterday, marking the first promotion leg in the Asia-Pacific after the first appearance in London last week.
"HTC Touch will help the company gain more market share in the segment, as its prices are competitive with LG Electronics' Prada or Apple's iPhone," Citi Investment Research said in a report last week.
HTC Touch retails at NT$15,900 (US$480) via Chunghwa Telecom Co (
projected sales
Citigroup -- which holds a "buy" rating on HTC with a target price adjusted upward to NT$710 from NT$650 -- said HTC would sell as many as 1 million to 1.5 million touch phone units during the next six to nine months.
Thanks to the launch of HTC Touch, HTC second-quarter sales are expected to hit NT$27 billion (US$815.3 million), up 17 percent from the first quarter, Citigroup estimated.
HTC chief executive Peter Chou (
"We have confidence in HTC Touch ... It will definitely be a plus to our financial performance in the third quarter," Chou said on the sidelines of the launch.
Chou dismissed comparisons with the iPhone, saying that HTC Touch was already in the design pipeline last year, well ahead of the iPhone.
He said the phone will cater to general consumers with its light weight, fashionable designs, simple-to-use interface as well as its proprietary TouchFLO technology, a 3D interface allowing for tip-of-the-finger navigation on screen.
Europe has already been experiencing a shortage of HTC Touch phones after the product was introduced last week.
Chou would not reveal details on shipments.
ambitions
He said that approximately 400 engineers were involved in the development and testing of HTC Touch, paving the way for its first phone in Asia.
HTC announced the acquisition of mobile phone brand Dopod International Corp (
"We will continue to work with operators and original design manufacturing [ODM] clients, but we will not overlook the importance of brand to sustain long-term survival," Chou said.
Affected by its ODM business, HTC sales dropped 4.13 percent to NT$7.99 billion last month from the same period last year, a 12.1 percent decline over the previous month.
Sales in the first five months of this year rose 1.85 percent from last year to NT$40.68 billion.
Its shares inched up 0.2 percent to close at NT$637 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts