Smartphone shipments from local manufacturers plunged to 4.3 million units last quarter as local brands failed to boost demand of their new flagship phones during the year-end shopping season, a Taipei-based market researcher said.
The figure hit the lowest level in two years, according to a report released by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 資策會) on Thursday.
Smartphone shipments last quarter sank 41.2 percent from the 10.43 million units during the same period in 2012. On a quarterly basis, shipments edged 1.3 percent lower from 4.38 million units, MIC’s report showed.
Market information advisory firm GfK said the decline in 2013 was brought on by fewer people seeking to swap out their phones along with a high comparison base of sales in 2012.
To broaden its product portfolio, HTC Corp (宏達電) in October last year launched its first phablet, the HTC One max.
NO FIRE TO SNAPDRAGON
However, the high-end 5.9 inch smartphone model, featuring Qualcomm Inc’s Snapdragon 600 mobile processor did not stimulate strong market demand in the end, MIC said.
“Without outstanding specs, the HTC One Max did not receive strong market response, and the company’s growth momentum was dragged as a result,” the market researcher said in the report.
MIC said the Snapdragon 600 mobile processor was the cause behind disappointing sales of the HTC One max, as the smartphone is less competitive than Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy Note 3, Sony Corp’s Xperia Z1 and LG Electronics Inc’s G2 smartphones, which all sport more advanced Snapdragon 800 chipsets from Qualcomm.
Yet HTC’s flagship model, the new HTC One, launched in February last year, continued to play a key role in bolstering the company’s shipment last quarter, alongside with its mid-end HTC One Mini and Desire-series smartphone products, MIC said.
Smartphones supporting 4G LTE technology accounted for 31.4 percent of the total shipments from Taiwan in the fourth quarter of last year, MIC said.
4G TECHNOLOGY
Most Taiwanese smartphone makers shipped phones supporting the widely adopted, fourth-generation (4G) technology — referred to as frequency-division-duplexing long term evolution (FDD-LTE).
Local smartphone models included the new HTC One Max, the HTC One Mini and Acer Inc’s (宏碁) mid-end smartphone model, Liquid S2, MIC said.
HTC is one of a very few local firms starting to offer some of its HTC One Max models equipped with handset chips supporting China’s 4G LTE technology, time-division long-term evolution (TD-LTE) technology, which it supplies its Chinese client China Mobile Ltd (中國移動).
MIC expected local companies would expand their 4G LTE portions to 40 percent in the current quarter, helped by an increase in orders from China’s three biggest telecom operators: China Mobile, China Unicom Ltd (中國聯通) and China Telecom Corp Ltd (中國電信).
Additional reporting by CNA
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)