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.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.2 and NT$0.3 per liter respectively, after international crude oil prices increased last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week snapped a two-week losing streak as the geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine turned increasingly tense, CPC said in a statement. News that some oil production facilities in Alberta, Canada, were shut down due to wildfires and that US-Iran nuclear talks made no progress also helped push oil prices to a significant weekly gain, Formosa said
MINERAL DIPLOMACY: The Chinese commerce ministry said it approved applications for the export of rare earths in a move that could help ease US-China trade tensions Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) is today to meet a US delegation for talks in the UK, Beijing announced on Saturday amid a fragile truce in the trade dispute between the two powers. He is to visit the UK from yesterday to Friday at the invitation of the British government, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. He and US representatives are to cochair the first meeting of the US-China economic and trade consultation mechanism, it said. US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that a new round of trade talks with China would start in London beginning today,
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