Taiwan-based smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電) took the title of largest smartphone supplier in terms of value in the local market last month on the back of strong interest in its latest flagship model, the HTC One M8, market statistics showed yesterday.
In terms of value share, HTC took about 26 percent of the Taiwan market last month, beating Samsung Electronics Co of South Korea (24 percent), Sony Corp of Japan (19 percent) and California-based Apple Inc (9 percent).
Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), with its new low-cost models in the ZenFone series, came in fifth with a 4 percent share, according to the statistics.
However, HTC lagged behind Samsung in terms of unit share, with only 16 percent to Samsung’s 20 percent, the data indicated.
Sony managed to get a 13 percent unit share, ranking third, followed by China’s Xiaomi Corp (小米) with 7 percent, and Asustek with 5 percent, the data showed.
The best-selling smartphone in terms of units over the month was HTC’s flagship One M8, which hit store shelves in late March, followed by Xiaomi’s budget Hongmi phone and Sony’s Xperia Z2.
Apple’s iPhone 5S came in fourth, ahead of Asustek’s ZenFone 5, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, Taiwan Mobile’s A3S, Samsung’s Galaxy S5, Samsung’s Galaxy Grand 2 and Taiwan Mobile’s A6S.
Market analysts said the inclusion of Xiaomi’s Hongmi model and Taiwan Mobile Co’s (台灣大哥大) own-branded A3S and A6S phones into the top-10 smartphone seller list showed that many local consumers have been drawn to low-priced devices.
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],”
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
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