Shipments from local handset makers are expected to slip 2.5 percent sequentially in the traditonally busy season last quarter as the belated launch of new phones from HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone brand, failed to prop up total shipments, research house DigiTimes Research said.
Local mobile phone makers shipped about 14.64 million units in the fourth quarter of last year down from 15.01 million units in the third quarter.
On an annual basis, that represented a contraction of 26 percent, the Taipei-based researcher said in a report released on Friday.
That brought down Taiwanese companies’ global market share to 2.8 percent last quarter, compared with 3.1 percent in the third quarter and 3.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Because HTC launched several new phones either running Google Inc’s Android system or Windows phone 8 at the end of November, the launches did not provide an immediate boost to HTC’s fourth-quarter shipments, DigiTimes analyst Luke Lin (林俊吉) said in a press release.
As a result, HTC’s shipments fell significantly last quarter from the previous quarter, offestting the growth in shipments posted by contract mobile phone manufacturers, DigiTimes said.
It did not provide detailed figures.
Contract phone makers Chi Mei Communications System Inc (奇美通訊), Compal Communications Inc (華寶通訊) and Arima Communications Corp (華冠通訊) enjoyed growth in shipments last quarter, the report said.
Smartphones accounted for a historic high share of total shipments of mobile phones last quarter, after Motorola Mobility LLC, a major client of local mobile phone companies, exited the feature phone market and slashed feature phone orders with local suppliers in the second half of last year, the report said
For the full year, local mobile phone makers shipped 64.6 million handsets last year, DigiTimes said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”