Struggling Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) declined to comment yesterday on a promotional video that uses four of its mobile devices to showcase new features of a Chinese-made mobile operating system.
Chinese software company Shanghai Liantong (上海聯通), in collaboration with the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese government, on Wednesday launched a government-approved China Operating System (COS), designed to break a foreign monopoly in the field of infrastructure software.
An official promotional video released on Chinese video-sharing site Youku.com showed COS running on various mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone 4S, the HTC Butterfly, HTC One, HTC One Max phones and the HTC Flyer tablet.
COS is designed to run on personal computers, smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes and smart appliances similar to those that use Google Inc’s Android OS.
However, the Chinese government is not planning to make COS an open-source platform because of security concerns.
HTC, whose devices run on Android and Microsoft Corp’s Windows, declined to confirm the products or any plans to launch COS-based devices.
“HTC remains focused on working with its current OS partners and we do not comment on speculation regarding other systems,” the company told reporters in an e-mail.
The COS announcement came after the Wall Street Journal reported in August last year that HTC was developing a new mobile operating system specifically targeting China, a market that the company hopes will help invigorate sliding sales.
The struggling handset maker posted an operating loss of NT$1.56 billion (US$52 million) in the three months ending last month, its second consecutive quarterly operating loss after being in the black every quarter since going public in 2002.
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) told Chinese news site Sina in September last year that her company is aiming to grab a 20 percent share of China’s high-end market by introducing two flagship smartphones — the Butterfly and One series.
According to data from research firm Avanti, however, the firm has seen its smartphone market share in China decline to 7.1 percent in the second quarter last year, while its brand awareness among Chinese consumers lags behind Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.
Many local analysts remain negative on HTC’s earnings outlook this year, citing intensifying competition and the lack of significant drivers of growth in the pipeline.
HTC shares edged up 1.12 percent to close at NT$135.5 yesterday in Taipei trading before its year-end party for employees. The company lost 53 percent of its market value last year.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”