Smartphones in Taiwan will account for nearly 30 percent of the nation’s total mobile phone shipments this year as more low-priced models are expected to be launched, consulting firm International Data Corp (IDC) said on Friday.
Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to reach 428 million units this year compared to 270 million units last year, an increase of more than 50 percent, according to IDC.
Smartphone shipments in Taiwan, which accounted for between 21 percent and 22 percent of total mobile phone shipments last year, will increase to between 29 percent and 30 percent this year, higher than the global average of 26 percent, IDC senior analyst Joey Yen (嚴蘭欣) told reporters at a news conference.
“Chinese OEM [original equipment manufacturing] phone makers, such as ZTE Co [中興] and Huawei Technologies Co [華為], are ready to unveil more smartphones at a price of NT$7,000 to NT$8,000 [US$240 to US$274] in Taiwan this year, providing more product choices for local consumers and improving the popularity of smartphones,” she said.
The move will also change the current ranking of smartphone shipments, particularly the top five brands, as the number of phones that run Google Inc’s Android operating system is increasing, Yen said.
In the third quarter last year, Nokia Corp, which uses the Symbian operating system on its smartphones, still topped the worldwide smartphone market with a 32.7 percent market share, followed by 17.4 percent for Apple Inc, 15.3 percent for Research In Motion, 8.9 percent for Samsung Electronics Co and 7.2 percent for HTC Corp (宏達電), said IDC.
Global smartphone shipments by Samsung, which launched a slew of Android-based models last year, grew to 7.2 million units in the third quarter of last year compared to 1.3 million units a year earlier, an increase of 453.8 percent that surpassed the performance of all other smartphone makers.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS