“Phablets,” or mobile devices between 5 inches and 6 inches in size that bridge the smartphone and tablet segments, are unlikely to attract a majority of consumers, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc said.
C.K. Lu (呂俊寬), senior research analyst of mobile devices at Gartner in Taipei, said such devices provide more choice for multidevice owners, but the opportunities they offer in the near term may not be as large as some companies imagine.
“We continue to believe it is a niche market,” Lu told a local media briefing recently, explaining that the phablet category appears attractive only to consumers in certain regions.
For example, Asian consumers prefer carrying only one mobile device because of their limited budget for electronic products, so phablet devices are gaining popularity in this area, he said.
However, in the US and Europe, people often carry 4.5 inch to 5 inch smartphones, as well as 7-inch tablet computers, when going out because they want to be able to separate the functions of a phone and a tablet, Lu said.
The key to making this segment successful is creating applications that take advantage of the large screen, such as those developed by handset makers Samsung Electronics Co of South Korea and Huawei Technologies Co (華為) of China, Lu added.
The remarks came after Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer Inc (宏碁) said on Monday last week that it plans to unveil its first phone-tablet hybrid handset at the Computex Taipei technology fair in June, which it hopes will gain traction in the fast-growing market.
The new Acer phablet is set to have special camera and software features. Another model with “major component upgrades” is to be launched by the end of this year or early next year, Acer president Jim Wong (翁建仁) said.
Wong projected that the global phablet market will grow to about 10 million units this year, up from between 7 million and 8 million units last year.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS