Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) yesterday launched an online application store for its smartphone users.
Taiwan Mobile is the second local phone company providing online software downloading services mostly free, following similar steps by their global peers and local rival Far EasTone Telecommunications Co Ltd (遠傳電信) after the success of Apple Inc’s App Store.
“We are re-packaging our products, which were originally offered on feature phones, for smartphone users, which are growing swiftly,” deputy chief operating officer Jeff Ku (谷元宏) said.
Taiwan Mobile has about 140,000 smartphone users, including those who use iPhones, Research In Motion’s Blackberry phones and HTC Corp’s (宏達電) range of smartphones.
“We hope to see a notable contribution from the app store, match Market, at the end of the year,” Ku said.
The telecoms operator said it planned to increase the number of applications available to about 500 by the end of the year, from 120, and it hopes to boost downloads to 600,000 by that time.
That would help the firm increase its data revenues by more than 20 percent, Ku said.
At the end of last year, data services accounted for about 12.5 percent of the company’s telecoms revenues, he said.
The firm currently only sells applications to its subscribers, but it plans to make it available to all.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by