Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), innovator of low-cost netbooks, expects to control more than 20 percent of the smart phone market in Taiwan by the end of the year, the company said at a media briefing yesterday.
The Taipei-based company released its second smart phone of the year, the P552w, featuring a touch-screen interface — called “glide” — and a 624 MHz processor running on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0.
“This smart phone is aimed at the working professional as well as young adults interested in style and multi-faceted functionality,” Kevin Lin (林福能), vice president of Asustek’s sales department, told reporters yesterday.
Towards the end of the year, Asus will release a third smart phone, Lin said.
NEW PLATFORMS
Moreover, the information technology manufacturer does not rule out creating mobile phones based on other platforms, such as Google’s Android.
“So far, there has not been any definitive decision on this topic, but we are certainly engaged in intense discussions,” Lin said.
Despite the slowdown in the global economy, “the growth of smart phones is unstoppable,” Sylvia Kuo (郭念慈), a senior manager of mobile communication business at Microsoft Taiwan Corp, said at the same event.
The smart phone market is expected to grow at between 5 percent and 9 percent year-on-year through 2012. Industry players predict smart phones could represent up to one-third of the mobile phone market by 2013, Kuo said.
‘STRONG FORCE’
“Taiwan is a very strong force in the smart phone market. So far this year, the nation has shipped more than 50 million units to-date, which is one-third of the global smart phone volume”, Kuo said during a speech yesterday.
Before its release to retailers on Friday, the P552w had already won Japan’s Good Design Award. The third-generation mobile phone supports Google maps and a global positioning system (GPS) and comes in black and white. It retails at NT$15,888.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained