Samsung Electronics Co led the nation’s mobile phone market in May on the back of the South Korean brand’s diversified and differentiated product portfolio, a company official said yesterday.
Samsung took a market share of 35.1 percent in May and 35.8 percent of the smartphone segment in particular, Andy Tu (杜偉昱), general manager of Samsung Electronics Taiwan Co’s mobile communications team, said on the sideline of a product launch, citing reports from market channels.
“May sales have been a big success, with the Galaxy S2 back in the bestselling smartphone position and a record 32,000 Galaxy Notes sold,” Tu said.
The success of the Galaxy Note shows that Taiwanese consumers are very receptive to devices that are a crossover between a smartphone and a tablet, Tu said.
However, because consumers replace high-end smartphones more slowly, Samsung Taiwan would launch more entry-level smartphones, Tu said, adding that he hopes to raise the company’s share of the entry-level and medium-priced smartphone market from 30 percent to 40 percent.
With smartphones accounting for 58.8 percent of overall mobile phone sales in May, Tu said he believes smartphones still have a big market potential in Taiwan.
Samsung yesterday launched the Galaxy Beam, which is equipped with a built-in pico projector and sells for NT$16,900 (US$573).
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day