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
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
Zimbabwe’s ban on raw lithium exports is forcing Chinese miners to rethink their strategy, speeding up plans to process the metal locally instead of shipping it to China’s vast rechargeable battery industry. The country is Africa’s largest lithium producer and has one of the world’s largest reserves, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). Zimbabwe already banned the export of lithium ore in 2022 and last year announced it would halt exports of lithium concentrates from January next year. However, on Wednesday it imposed the ban with immediate effect, leaving unclear what the lithium mining sector would do in the
RSS