HTC Corp (宏達電) and Samsung Electronics Co, smartphone makers that sell handsets running on the Android operating system, gained market share worldwide last quarter as the Google Inc software became more popular.
Samsung, which unveiled the Galaxy line of Android-based devices last year, almost tripled its share of the global smartphone market to 9.6 percent as its shipments rose more than fivefold, research firm IDC Corp said yesterday. HTC almost doubled its portion to 8.5 percent and more than tripled shipments.
The top phone makers who didn’t use the Google software lost or maintained market share, IDC said. Research In Motion Ltd (RIM), which sells BlackBerry phones on its own operating system, fell to 14.5 percent of the market from 19.9 percent a year ago. Nokia Oyj, the biggest smartphone maker, slipped to 28 percent from 38.6 percent. Apple Inc, which sells the iPhone, maintained its share at 16.1 percent.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, gives away Android for free to boost revenue from services such as mobile advertising and expand the market for its search engine. A separate report last week, from research firm Canalys, showed Android became the world’s best-selling operating system for smartphones last quarter.
The industry shipped 100.9 million smartphones during the fourth quarter worldwide, a jump of 87 percent from a year earlier, Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC said. For the year, shipments totaled 302.6 million worldwide, up 74 percent from 2009, IDC said.
Operating systems control mobile devices much like similar software on personal computers and they come with a different variety of applications and functions.
Similar trends are appearing in the US, according to Virginia-based researcher ComScore Inc. While RIM maintained its spot as the most popular smartphone operating system, it declined in December to less than a third of the market from 41.6 percent a year earlier. Google’s Android operating system jumped to 28.7 percent of the market from 5.2 percent, according to the report.
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Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last