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.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
RSS