Microsoft Corp is gearing up to grab a share of the highly competitive smartphone operating system (OS) market with its partner in the sector, HTC Corp (宏達電), launching two new phones yesterday that run its latest Windows Phone platform.
The two HTC phones — the Titan and the Radar — are scheduled to hit the shelves at the end of this month. The price of the 4.7-inch Titan is NT$18,900 (US$623), while the 3.8-inch Radar will cost NT$13,900.
Microsoft Taiwan general manager Davis Tsai (蔡恩全) said the company is confident that Mango, the latest upgrade of the company’s Windows Phone OS, has a good chance of challenging Apple Inc’s iOS over the next three years.
Mango’s new features have grabbed market attention. The improvements include threads, which allow users to switch between text, Facebook chat and Windows Live Messenger within the same conversation, and deeper social network integration, which means Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds are now integrated into contact cards and users can see updates from all their contacts in one stream under the “What’s New” tab.
In April, researcher Gartner forecast that Google Inc’s Android OS would have the largest market share during the next four years, rising to 49 percent in 2015 from 23 percent last year.
Apple’s iOS was predicted to grow to 17 percent from 16 percent, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS would grab 19.5 percent in 2015 from 4.2 percent last year.
In June, IDC predicted that Microsoft would hold a 20.3 percent market share in 2015.
Taiwanese app developers have started to position themselves to ride the growth of Windows Phone.
“You see shadows of the iOS on Android and these two are more app-driven platforms, while Mango gives you a complete user experience, such as in terms of navigation direction,” said Izero Lee (李明哲), chief operating officer of KKBox Inc, Taiwan’s largest online music service provider.
KKBox has updated its app in Traditional Chinese for subscribers of Windows Phone’s app store, Windows Marketplace.
The music provider, which debuted its music service in Japan in June, is testing a Mango-based app for launch in that market by early next year, Lee said.
KKBox is also promoting its app on Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store.
Hu Hsueh-hai (胡學海), marketing managing director at Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), said it is in talks with Microsoft Taiwan to bundle its own app store, called Hami, into Windows Marketplace, in a move that would offer Hami to a larger audience.
Microsoft Taiwan said offerings in its Marketplace are set to soar to 100,000 apps by the end of next year, from the current archive of almost 35,000 apps.
“Our application store will be the fastest growing of them all,” said Cathy Yeh (葉怡君), Windows client business group director.
There are more than 200 apps developed by Taiwanese firms on Marketplace and e-reading, music services and games apps are popular among Taiwanese users, she said.
The domestic unit of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-headquartered chipmaker Nexperia BV will soon be able to produce semiconductors locally within China, according to two company sources. Nexperia is at the center of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology, with a Dutch court in February ordering a probe into alleged mismanagement at the company. The geopolitical tussle has disrupted supply chains, with some carmakers reportedly forced to cut production due to chip shortages. Local production would allow Nexperia’s domestic arm, Nexperia Semiconductors (China) Ltd (安世半導體中國), to bypass restrictions in place since October on the supply of silicon wafers — etched with tiny components to
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Taiwan is open to joining a global liquefied natural gas (LNG) program if one is created, but on the condition that countries provide delivery even in a scenario where there is a conflict with China, an energy department official said yesterday. While Taiwan’s priority is to have enough LNG at home, the nation is open to exploring potential strategic reserves in other countries such as Japan or South Korea, Energy Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇憲) said. While the LNG market does not have a global reserve for emergencies like that of oil, the concept has been raised a few times —
AI-FUELED DEMAND: The company has been benefiting from the skyrocketing prices for DRAM chips amid the AI frenzy, especially its core product — DDR4 DRAM chips DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday reported that its revenue for the first quarter surged 582.91 percent to NT$49.09 billion (US$1.54 billion) from NT$7.19 billion a year earlier, as the supply crunch caused chip price spikes. Last quarter’s figure is the highest on record. On a quarterly basis, revenue jumped 63.14 percent from NT$30.09 billion, the company said. In January, Nanya Technology expected global DRAM supply scarcity to continue through the first half of 2028, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) forecast prices of standard DRAM chips would rise between 58 percent and 63
RSS