Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to grow by 30.2 percent to 865 million units next year, accounting for about 43.9 percent of total cellphone shipments, boosted by strong demand from developing countries such as China and India, a local research house forecast yesterday.
This year, global smartphone shipments are expected to grow nearly 37 percent year-on-year to 664.6 million units, Digitimes Research said in a report.
Smartphones are likely to grow at a fast rate in emerging markets such as China, Russia, India, Indonesia and South America, due to low smartphone penetration, Digitimes Research said.
Meanwhile, demand for high-end smartphones in Western European countries may be affected by the countries’ economic condition, because most have announced austerity measures that would weaken consumer spending.
Next year, growth for smartphone brands will depend on their partnerships with software developers, hardware manufacturers, the strength of market demand and telecommunications carriers’ policies, the firm said.
Digitimes said Microsoft Corp is likely to launch its first smartphone running its Windows 8 operating system next year.
In addition, Digitimes said Nokia Oyj and Research In Motion Ltd may face growth limitations while attempting to transform their businesses, and online retailer Amazon.com Inc is poised to enter the already crowded smartphone market next year.
In a separate report, Digitimes predicted that LCD TV shipments in Taiwan would drop 17 percent this year, before resuming 20 percent annual growth as 44.73 million units are shipped next year.
Japanese television brand Toshiba is expected to order 10 million units from local contract TV makers, as that it would outsource 70 percent of its production to its suppliers, Digitimes said.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150
RSS