Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電) is no longer among the world’s top five smartphone vendors following a drop in sales last quarter, surpassed by Huawei Technologies Co (華為) of China and Sony Mobile Communications International AB of Japan, according to a US-based research firm.
Huawei jumped to the third spot with a 4.9 percent share of the market in the fourth quarter of last year, trailed by Sony Mobile with 4.5 percent and China’s ZTE Corp (中興) with a 4.3 percent market share, the International Data Corp (IDC) reported on Jan. 24.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co remained the top player with a 29 percent market share, while second-placed Apple Inc extended its share to 21.8 percent thanks to record iPhone shipments in the fourth quarter of last year, IDC said.
The research firm did not disclose fourth-quarter figures for HTC, which ranked fifth with a 4 percent market share in the third quarter.
The worldwide smartphone market grew 36.4 percent from a year ago to 219.4 million units in the fourth quarter, which represented 45.5 percent of all mobile phone shipments, the highest percentage ever, IDC said.
“The high-growth smartphone market, though dominated by Samsung and Apple, still presents ample opportunities for challengers,” IDC’s senior research analyst Kevin Restivo said. “Vendors with unique market advantages, such as lower-cost devices, can rapidly gain market shares, especially in emerging markets.”
For last year as a whole, HTC was ranked as the world’s No. 4 smartphone producer, with shipments of 32.6 million units and a 4.6 percent market share, though both were down sharply from the 43.6 million units and 8.8 percent share in 2011, the report said.
Samsung and Apple retained their positions as the top two vendors, taking a 30.3 percent and a 19.1 percent share of the market respectively, with Finnish handset maker Nokia Oyj ranking third with a 4.9 percent market share, the report showed.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS