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.
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