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).
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
RSS