Free apps are estimated to account for 89 percent of the total downloads in the mobile app market this year, the US-based research firm Gartner Inc said yesterday.
The figure shows that out of the 45.6 billion total downloads, about 40.6 billion were free, said Gartner, which also predicted that the figure will have risen to 93 percent by 2016.
Meanwhile, apps priced between US$0.99 and US$2.99 are likely to account for approximately 87.5 percent of total paid downloads this year and are expected to climb to 96 percent in 2016.
Gartner research director Sandy Shen (沈哲怡) said that like free apps, low-priced apps will garner large-scale downloads.
In related news, sales of mobile communication products in Taiwan for the second quarter of this year jumped 46 percent from a year earlier, according to a report released yesterday by market researcher GfK Group.
GfK Taiwan said strong sales of Android-based smartphones, which accounted for more than 50 percent of the cellphones sold in June, were the major force driving growth in the mobile communications sector.
The report also showed sales of tablet computers in the second quarter jumped 103 percent from a year earlier.
In contrast, laptop sales were down from a year earlier, despite reduced pricing for the new Ultrabooks, it said.
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