Smartphone maker HTC Corp’s (宏達電) recent promotional campaign failed to boost its brand awareness in the US and its market share in the country fell from July to October.
In August, HTC hired actor Robert Downey Jr, the star of the Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes film series, to be the spokesperson for an advertising campaign aimed at restoring luster to the struggling company’s brand.
The campaign started with an ad on YouTube on Aug. 15 and was followed by a series of TV commercials and ads before movies.
However, a survey issued by market research firm comScore said that HTC’s market share in the US had fallen to 6.7 percent at the end of October from 8 percent in July.
FOURTH PLACE
HTC ranked fourth among major smartphone brands in the US, behind Apple Inc’s 40.6 percent, Samsung Electronics Co’s 25.4 percent and Motorola’s 7 percent.
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc, now a Google Inc subsidiary, replaced HTC as the third-largest smartphone vendor in the US in October by gaining 0.1 percent in market share during the period.
LG Electronics Co came in fifth with a 6.6 percent market share.
LARGE GAINS
Among the five top brands in the US, Samsung registered the highest growth in market share from July to October, with a gain of 1.3 percent. Apple’s share rose 0.2 percent, the survey showed.
Analysts said the HTC One Max model launched in October in the US did not help boost the company’s market share.
Market research firm Trend Force said last week that HTC shipped about 1.6 million smartphones in both October and last month, and it estimated fourth-quarter shipments of 5.2 million units, down 40 percent from last year.
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