The nation is among the top five markets for Google Inc’s app store by revenue, helped by the public’s increasing use of smartphones, Google said yesterday.
Google vice president of engineering and Google Play in Asia-Pacific head Chris Yerga told a news conference in Taipei that three of the top five Google Play markets are in Asia — Taiwan, Japan and South Korea — and that the US is also among the five.
He declined to name the fifth market or give the specific rankings of the top five, saying only that the figures were not for public consumption.
It was not a surprise to see three Asian markets in the top-five list given the high smartphone penetration rates in these countries, which in turn leads to strong demand for mobile games, Yerga said.
Launched in 2012 as the official app store for Google’s Android operating system, Google Play now has more than 1 million free and paying apps and over 50 billion downloads. It also offers music, games, magazines, books, movies and television programs.
Google Play’s game services received 100 million new users between January and June last year, making it the fastest-growing mobile gaming network ever, according to Google.
A poll released in December last year by the Institute for Information Industry (資策會) found that 13.55 million Taiwanese aged over 12 owned a smartphone by the second half of last year, representing 65.4 percent of Taiwanese in that demographic.
That was up from a smartphone penetration rate of 58.7 percent during the first half of last year, the survey said.
Merida Industry Co (美利達) has seen signs of recovery in the US and European markets this year, as customers are gradually depleting their inventories, the bicycle maker told shareholders yesterday. Given robust growth in new orders at its Taiwanese factory, coupled with its subsidiaries’ improving performance, Merida said it remains confident about the bicycle market’s prospects and expects steady growth in its core business this year. CAUTION ON CHINA However, the company must handle the Chinese market with great caution, as sales of road bikes there have declined significantly, affecting its revenue and profitability, Merida said in a statement, adding that it would
MARKET LEADERSHIP: Investors are flocking to Nvidia, drawn by the company’s long-term fundamntals, dominant position in the AI sector, and pricing and margin power Two years after Nvidia Corp made history by becoming the first chipmaker to achieve a US$1 trillion market capitalization, an even more remarkable milestone is within its grasp: becoming the first company to reach US$4 trillion. After the emergence of China’s DeepSeek (深度求索) sent the stock plunging earlier this year and stoked concerns that outlays on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure were set to slow, Nvidia shares have rallied back to a record. The company’s biggest customers remain full steam ahead on spending, much of which is flowing to its computing systems. Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc are
RISING: Strong exports, and life insurance companies’ efforts to manage currency risks indicates the NT dollar would eventually pass the 29 level, an expert said The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rallied to its strongest in three years amid inflows to the nation’s stock market and broad-based weakness in the US dollar. Exporter sales of the US currency and a repatriation of funds from local asset managers also played a role, said two traders, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly. State-owned banks were seen buying the greenback yesterday, but only at a moderate scale, the traders said. The local currency gained 0.77 percent, outperforming almost all of its Asian peers, to close at NT$29.165 per US dollar in Taipei trading yesterday. The
The US overtaking China as Taiwan’s top export destination could boost industrial development and wage growth, given the US is a high-income economy, an economist said yesterday. However, Taiwan still needs to diversify its export markets due to the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s administration, said Chiou Jiunn-rong (邱俊榮), an economics professor at National Central University. Taiwan’s exports soared to a record US$51.74 billion last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products and continued orders, with information and communication technology (ICT) and audio/video products leading all sectors. The US reclaimed its position as Taiwan’s top export market, accounting for
RSS