South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc launched a revamped series of its tablet computers in Taiwan yesterday and said it is aiming to take a 5 percent share of the local market this year.
LG, which returned to Taiwan’s tablet market in November last year after a two-year absence, sold 15,000 of its G Tab 8.3 model in the first half of the year for a 1.5 percent market share, said Jackie Kim, director of mobile business at LG’s Taiwan branch.
With the launch of four new tablets, LG aims to take a 5 percent share of the local market in the second half of this year, which will represent sales of 5,000 units per month, Kim told reporters at the G Tablet series product launch.
However, Kim forecast that the overall tablet market will decline by between 5 percent and 10 percent this year to 1.2 million units due to a longer replacement cycle, with more than half of the overall tablets in the market expected to be 7-inch models.
Last week, Samsung Electronic Co’s local mobile communications team said Taiwan’s overall tablet shipments declined 6 percent year-on-year in the first five months of this year after four years of high growth, although the high-end tablet market still grew at a single-digit percentage from January to May this year as consumers began upgrading to premium tablets.
LG intends to make a further push into the growing 8-inch market segment because the 7-inch segment has become highly competitive and is being cannibalized by bigger smartphones, while the 10-inch segment is dominated by Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics, Kim said.
LG said the company’s two new G Tablet models will go on sale on Tuesday next week at NT$4,990 (US$167) for the 7-inch version and NT$8,990 for the 10.1-inch model.
An 8-inch Wi-Fi model and a 4G LTE model of the same size are scheduled to be released in September, the company said, without revealing prices.
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