Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s second-largest handset maker by market share behind Finland’s Nokia Oyj, will focus on high-end customers this year because high-end phones are more profitable, a company official said yesterday.
“While units [shipments] are important, even more important is the value of each handset unit. Samsung will focus on mid to high-end phones this year to drive up revenues as we see higher margins associated with high-end phones,” Smile Kim, president of Samsung Electronics’ Taiwan branch, yesterday said.
Samsung expects to ship 200 million units worldwide this year, compared with last year’s 196.6 million units.
But Kim said he saw an increase in rush orders for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) from Samsung’s memory chip department and believed that signs point to a “warming up” in downstream technology business.
In Taiwan, Samsung hopes to lead the market this year, with a sales target of US$200 million, Kim said.
Research by US-based Strategy Analytics Inc shows the global handset market grew 4.9 percent in shipment volume to 1.18 billion units last year, from 1.12 billion units.
Nokia and Samsung claimed the top two spots last year with a market share of 39.8 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively, on shipments of 468.4 million and 196.6 million units each, Strategy Analytics’ data showed.
Next in the rankings for mobiles by worldwide market share were LG Electronics Inc, Motorola Inc and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd, in that order.
Samsung’s handset focus this year will be on improving user-interface, promoting high-definition (HD) quality visual and sound, and introducing touch screen technology across different feature phones, Kim said.
The firm also wants to seek leadership in niche markets across product lines, such as “being No. 1 in the domestic 40-inch full HD TV category,” he said.
Ryu Jae-hyun, a director of the mobile marketing department of Samsung Electronics’ Taiwan branch, said customers would see Ultra Touch S8300 in the style category at the end of next month, as well as M7600 and M6710 in multimedia category sometime in June.
“These new models are currently on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona,” Ryu said at the same briefing.
Also See: Phone operators set to provide ‘chat’ services with boost
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
RSS