Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom operator, plans to sell more middle and low-priced smartphones in the coming four years to boost smartphone sales volume, a company official said yesterday.
Vice president Shi Mu-piao (石木標) said the strategy would involve reducing subsidies for high-end products and offering more smartphones with lower price tags to attract subscribers with tighter budgets and keep costs under control.
“We hope to reduce the share of high-end smartphones from 60 percent of all smartphone sales this year to 40 percent in 2015. The subsidy offered on these products has become a heavy burden for us,” Shi said on the sidelines of a seminar on smart handheld devices.
“We also plan to sell more middle and low-level priced models, which should boost sales,” he said.
Smartphones are expected to account for 40 to 45 percent of the 2.1 million mobile phones Chunghwa Telecom is projected to sell this year, with high-end devices priced above NT$15,000 accounting for about 60 percent of the smartphones, Shi said.
Meanwhile, since 80 percent of consumers who buy iPhones through Chunghwa Telecom subscribe to its data plans, the next challenge for the company will be expanding its wireless broadband network to meet increasing consumer demand for data traffic, Shi said.
Smartphones will account for 32 to 35 percent of overall mobile phone sales in Taiwan this year, up from 22 percent last year, according to the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center.
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