Taiwanese handset shipments dropped 10 percent sequentially last quarter after smartphone shipments plunged 13.9 percent as demand for Apple Inc’s iPhones weakened ahead of the launch of a new model, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday.
Overall, mobile phone shipments shrank to 1.99 million in the quarter ending June 30, compared with 2.21 million in the first quarter, IDC said, blaming seasonal slow demand. Smartphone shipments last quarter plummeted to 1.42 million units, accounting for 70 percent of total handset shipments.
On an annual basis, handset shipments slipped 0.3 percent, while smartphone shipments expanded 43.6 percent, according to IDC’s statistics.
“In addition to seasonal slow demand, a sharp decline in Apple’s iPhone is the main reason for the bigger-than-expected quarterly contraction,” IDC analyst Joey Yen (嚴蘭欣) wrote in a report.
iPhone shipments sank more than 80 percent quarter-on-quarter, or more than 300,000 units, she said.
“There was inventory digestion on the supply channel, followed by the record-high iPhone shipments in the first quarter, before the new iPhone launches,” Yen said.
Apple’s competitors also rolled out smartphones with a bigger screen than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch panel, cutting iPhone demand last quarter, she said.
Last week, Samsung Electronics Co said it had sold 20 million units of its Galaxy S III smartphone globally since its launch in May, making the smartphone the best seller in the company’s history. The smartphone is powered by the Android operating system and equipped with a 4.8-inch screen.
The contraction in iPhone shipments drove the market share of the iOS software that powers the iPhone down to 5.2 percent last quarter, while boosting the Android system, supported by search engine giant Google Inc, to an all-time high of 92.7 percent, IDC said.
Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone system’s market share fell to 1 percent last quarter from 1.4 percent in the first quarter, as Nokia Oyj’s new Windows-based smartphone failed to fuel demand.
Because Apple is scheduled to launch its new iPhone tomorrow, Yen said it would be a big challenge for the Android system to safeguard its share of the local smartphone market.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to