India posted the world's largest sales of mobile phones to end users in the third quarter, helping the Asian market expand 26 percent, a global survey showed.
Sales of mobile phones using both CDMA and GSM technologies reached 24.5 million units during the three months ended September in the world's second-most populous nation, said the survey by market research firm Gartner.
That came out of overall mobile phone sales of 101.8 million units in the Asia-Pacific region.
"India's performance was driven by CDMA phones and fierce competition among operators of GSM networks, which stimulated sales of replacement phones and allowed operators to penetrate rural areas quickly," Gartner analyst Ann Liang (梁嘉鈴) said in a statement yesterday.
The number of Indian mobile phone subscribers passed the 200 million mark in August after another eight million customers were added that month, according to figures from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
The government is aiming for more than half a billion mobile phone subscribers by 2010.
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
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