Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s second-largest telecom operator, said yesterday it was working with positioning service (GPS) service provider Garmin Corp to offer GPS service on handsets in a bid to boost mobile data service revenues amid falling voice traffic.
The announcement follows Taiwan Mobile’s posting of a lower-than-expected annual decline in mobile revenues for the second quarter at the end of last month. It said mobile revenues had slipped 1 percent to NT$14.7 billion from a year ago.
Local telecom carriers are trying to spur demand for data transmission by offering various content for mobile phones such as real-time snapshots of Beijing Olympic Games provided by Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s top phone company.
Taiwan Mobile sees growth potential in the rising demand for GPS phones and expects such handsets will become popular in the near future.
“We believe the sale of Garmin’s GPS [software] will greatly lift the company’s value-added service contribution to the company’s overall revenues,” said Jeff Ku (谷元宏), a vice president of Taiwan Mobile.
The partnership would help Taiwan Mobile achieve its target of increasing share of value-added services to 10 percent of its total revenues by the end of this year, Ku said.
Value-added services accounted for 9 percent of its overall revenues, up from 7.6 percent last year, Taiwan Mobile said.
“Next year, the contribution should be even bigger,” Ku said.
The Taiwan Mobile-Garmin partnership is the first to offer GPS software, which is sold for NT$100 per use, or NT$1,200 for unlimited use. Last year, Garmin worked with the US wireless service provider Sprint Nextel to sell GPS software to its subscribers.
Garmin, which holds about 28 percent in market share, is the world’s largest GPS device and software supplier.
Shipments of handheld devices embedded with GPS software are expected to grow rapidly to 20 million units in 2010, from 5 million units last year, said Tony An (安志東), a director of Garmin, citing market researcher Canalys’ forecast.
Taiwan Mobile is also looking into selling Garmin’s first GPS mobile phone in Taiwan next year, if the current business model works well, Ku said.
Garmin originally planned to sell the phone during the Christmas shopping season.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks