Samsung Electronics Corp yesterday announced Taiwanese consumers could start pre-ordering the company’s new flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone from today, a little over a month after the company unveiled the Android-based product in New York.
Samsung has priced its new 5-inch, 16 gigabyte model at NT$21,900. Consumers can own the phone at zero cost by paying minimum monthly subscription fees ranging from NT$2,199 to NT$2,540 to local telecom carriers under a two-year contract.
The company plans to start selling the S4 in 155 countries on April 27 by collaborating with 327 telecom carriers around the world.
The new Galaxy S4 is an extension of Samsung’s Galaxy Android smartphone series that has underpinned the company’s dominance in the mobile phone market.
“Samsung Galaxy S4 features its ultra-sensory intelligence technology and advanced software and hardware. We are very confident that our new product, with promotion by telecoms carriers and other sales channels, will become consumers’ best choice this year,” said Andy Tu (杜偉昱), general manager of the Samsung Taiwan mobile communication team.
Meanwhile, the Fair Trade Commission is investigating whether Samsung hired people to spread negative reviews online about its rivals’ products, including HTC Corp’s (宏達電) new flagship product, the HTC One.
Tu played down the investigation’s impact on sales and said the company would focus on “experience marketing” to promote its new product.
Samsung was the world’s largest handset vendor last year, shipping 384.63 million mobile phones, with a market share of 22 percent, followed by Nokia’s 19.1 percent and Apple’s 7.5 percent, according to Gartner Inc’s statistics.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day