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).
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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