Seeking a new growth engine, Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信) aims to boost its data business to make a bigger share of 20 percent by the end of the year by selling more new mobile devices, including mobile-Internet devices (MID) and Android phones, a company executive said yesterday.
The nation’s third-largest telecoms operator said its data revenues grew to make up about 14 percent of its total revenues in the first three months of the year as it offered diverse gadgets from netbooks to game consoles, compared with less than 10 percent two years ago.
Far EasTone hopes that adding more new mobile devices such as MIDs and Android-based cellular phones to its product lineup later this year will help it boost its data business, Far EasTone vice president Samuel Yuan (袁興) said.
The company is also considering selling electronic readers among the different gadgets enabling wireless Internet access on 3.5-generation (3.5G) technology in the future, Yuan said.
Far EasTone increased its 3.5G data card subscriptions to 180,000 users as of last month from 170,000 in May, company tallies showed.
It is now selling a MID from local electronics maker BenQ Corp (明基) that is powered by Intel Corp’s Atom chip at NT$1,890 (US$57.3) per unit, along with a three-year service contract, which entails a minimum monthly bill of NT$775.
Most MIDs are sold by telecom operators, who bundle the units with services in Asia, Europe and US, as telecom companies are more willing to subsidize such devices to increase data revenues, said Michael Chen (陳武宏), director of Intel’s embedded sales and ultra mobility group in Asia Pacific.
Taiwanese electronic makers are the major suppliers of MIDs sold around the world and leading manufacturers include Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) and Inventec Corp (英業達).
This week’s undoing of the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin and its sister token, Luna, has ramifications for all of crypto. First, there is the immediate impact: The rapid collapse of a once-popular pair of cryptocurrencies sent a ripple effect across the industry, contributing to plummeting coin prices that wiped hundreds of billions of market value from the digital-asset market and stoked worries over the potential fragility of digital-asset ventures. Then there are the knock-on effects. In addition to delivering punishing losses to individual users and investment firms, the spectacular failure of a market darling like Terra threatens to have a cooling effect
material SHORTAGE: Even as workers are about to return, Quanta lacks operating supplies, while Pegatron reported its lowest revenues in 11 quarters, the companies said Taiwan’s major Apple Inc supplier cut its outlook for the second quarter, joining a growing list of manufacturers warning about the fallout from lockdowns aimed at containing China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years. Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), which assembles MacBooks, expects a 20 percent quarterly fall in notebook shipments and a squeeze on margins this quarter due to the lockdown, a company representative said on Friday during an earnings call. The impact from supply chain disruptions could last until the end of the year, she said. The company’s Shanghai factory has been operating under tight restrictions since the middle of last month,
The US and the EU were yesterday to announce a joint effort aimed at identifying semiconductor supply disruptions as well as countering Russian disinformation, officials said. Top US officials are visiting the French scientific hub of Saclay for a meetup of the Trade and Technology Council, created last year as China increasingly exerts its technology clout. US officials acknowledged that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has broadened the council’s scope, but said the Western bloc still has its eye on competition from China. The two sides will announce an “early warning system” for semiconductors supply disruptions, hoping to avoid excessive competition between Western powers
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) has made further progress in its expansion into semiconductor manufacturing as its subsidiary teams up with Dagang NeXchange Bhd (DNeX) to build a 12-inch wafer fab in Malaysia. Big Innovation Holdings Ltd (BIH), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hon Hai, has inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with DNeX to collaborate on establishing and operating the semiconductor fab in the Southeastern Asian country, it said in a statement released by DNeX on its Web site. The fab is expected to produce 40,000 12-inch wafers per month, deploying 28-nanometer and 40-nanometer process technologies, the statement said. Under