HTC’s US hold shrinks further
HTC Corp’s (宏達電) share of the US smartphone market has continued its decline, shrinking over the three months ending in October as the Taiwanese manufacturer struggled through a product transition period.
Despite the drop, the Taoyuan-based company remained the fifth-largest smartphone vendor in the US, commanding a 4.1 percent share between August and October, a proportion representing a decline of 0.6 percentage points from the May-to-July period, according to a report published on Friday by market research firm comScore Inc.
HTC was not alone in suffering a decline, with top-ranked smartphone vendor Apple Inc seeing its US market share drop by 0.5 percentage points to 41.9 percent in the August-to-October period, the report showed.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co bucked the trend to maintain its second place ranking after its market share increased 0.9 percentage points to 29.3 percent, the report added.
Fellow South Korean firm LG Electronics Inc came in a distant third with a 7.4 percent market share, followed by PC maker Lenovo-owned Motorola Mobility in fourth with a 5.2 percent stake, comScore said.
In the three-month period, the researcher reported that 176 million US residents over the age of 13 were smartphone owners, making up 72.9 percent of all mobile phone subscribers in the country.
Cross-strait tech talks planned
The Ministry of Economic Affairs on Saturday said that Taiwan and China are expected to hold talks in the middle of the month to discuss technical items related to the proposed cross-strait trade in goods agreement.
The ministry said that both sides had previously planned to hold the negotiations on Friday.
The venue for the upcoming negotiations is likely to be in Beijing, the ministry said, adding that Bureau of Foreign Trade Director Yang Jen-ni (楊珍妮) will represent Taiwan in the talks. Representing China will be the director of the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau division of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Chen Xin (陳星), it said.
The talks are to focus on technical items covering issues on cross-strait markets for flat panels, machine tools, automobiles and petrochemicals.
The nation’s business sector has urged the government to speed up the pace of progress in the trade in goods pact, particularly after Beijing and Seoul concluded negotiations on a free-trade agreement last month.
According to a recent government report, the Beijing-Seoul agreement could lead Taiwan’s total exports to fall by 1.35 percent, or US$3.75 billion, after its implementation.
Taiwan tops invention shows
Taiwan outperformed other countries at two invention shows last week, taking honors at an event held in Hong Kong and another in Kuwait.
Taiwanese inventors took home 52 gold medals, 21 silvers and five bronzes at this year’s annual IDC International Invention and Design Fair in Hong Kong, which ran from Thursday to Saturday.
Among the winning Taiwanese entries was a solar-powered street lamp-like device that can prevent smog and kill germs, which earned one gold medal and a special award. The device makes use of ultraviolet light to kill germs and purify the air around it, helping to ensure cleaner air along a road if installed at 5km intervals.
Chinese environmental authorities in Beijing and Shandong Province have expressed interest in the patented product, which retails for NT$30,000 per unit, according to the Taipei-based Chinese Innovation and Invention Society.
In Kuwait, Taiwan garnered 19 awards and two special awards at the International Invention Fair of the Middle East, which opened on Thursday and brought together 150 inventors from 25 countries.
One of the Taiwanese winners was a tumbler-like container that keeps tea leaves and water separate, removing the need for a separate teapot and cup. The invention attracted a lot attention and netted its creator a gold medal and a special prize.
The cup features a patented exhaust button to ensure that internal pressure changes will not cause the drink to pop when opened.
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],”
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
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