HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said that it is aiming to secure its home market share by selling more 4G smartphones this year, as local telecom operators prepare to launch 4G network services.
“HTC is planning to offer consumers a variety of 4G-capable smartphones to retain its leadership in the home market,” HTC’s president for the Greater China region Jack Tong (董俊良) said at the product launches of the phone maker’s new 4G Long-Term Evolution (LET) One and Butterfly S smartphones.
The latest instalment of the company’s flagship One series will be available starting today and will carry the same NT$19,900 price tag as its 3G version. The new Butterfly S 4G LTE model is set to hit the market as early as Wednesday next week and retail at NT$20,900.
The Taoyuan-based company said it also has plans to launch tailor-made 4G handsets for the nation’s top three telecom carriers — Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) — for use in various frequency spectrums.
Tong said that after the rollout, HTC’s new 4G smartphones are forecast to account for more than 50 percent of the company’s total products.
When asked if the smartphone vendor would use Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek Inc’s (聯發科) chipset products — which cheaper than those made by Qualcomm Inc — to reduce manufacturing costs, Tong said: “HTC does not rule out any opportunity to adopt different technologies or collaborate with new partners.”
JPMorgan analyst Alvin Kwock (郭彥麟) said that HTC could increase its market share during the first half of the year if it manages to sell 100 million units of TD-LTE smartphones in China.
Citing the three low-end Desire series models that the company launched last month, Kwock said that HTC’s inclusion of processors made by Broadcom Corp, ST-Ericsson and Spreadtrum Communications Inc (展訊通信) in the three products “marked its attempt to make a comeback in the sector by making China its home market.”
However, HTC might not fare well for long, given the strong likelihood that rival Chinese vendors will launch competing 4G products in the second half of the year, Kwock said in a note to clients on Monday.
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
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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
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