Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) hopes the launch of its next-generation smartphone — the ZenFone 3 — in June will help boost growth momentum in the second half of this year, a company official said on Friday.
“We expect to introduce the new flagship smartphone at the end of June and start mass production in July,” Asustek chief financial officer Nick Wu (吳長榮) said in a telephone interview.
Together with the launches of other handsets in the second half of the year, the company aims to sell 25 million smartphones this year, an increase of 25 percent from last year’s 20 million units.
The company in February cut its annual shipment target for smartphones from 30 million units to 25 million units.
The smartphone business for the first half of the year is likely to remain flattish or increase slightly from the 8 million units sold over the same period last year, as the product cycle of the ZenFone 2 series gradually dissipates, the company said.
Analysts said the company would need to ship 17 million units between July and December to reach its annual target.
However, as the Zenfone series becomes more complete, it will serve as a stronger growth driver for Asustek, they said.
The company’s goal of a 25 percent annual increase in smartphone shipments is higher than the global average of 7 percent forecast by international research house Gartner Inc on March 31.
It also underlines chief executive officer Jerry Shen’s (沈振來) efforts to improve the firm’s smartphone marketing strategies.
Shen in February said that Asustek aims to focus on fast-growing emerging markets this year such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and India.
The firm also plans to introduce a limited number of higher-margin smartphones in the regions in a bid to have a deeper and closer relationship with consumers there, he said.
Shen said the company hopes to see its market share in Indonesia increase to 18 percent this year from 15 percent last year and from 2 percent to 5 percent in India.
Compared with the company’s aggressiveness in the smartphone business, Asustek is conservative about the outlook of its tablet segment, after seeing an annual decline of 37.23 percent in shipments last year amid softening demand.
In the first quarter of this year, the company only shipped 1 million tablets, down 33.33 percent from 1.5 million units a year ago, Wu said.
Wu said the company also plans to introduce new tablets in June and will continue improving its operation efficiency in the tablet segment in a bid to increase tablet shipments in the second half.
However, the persistent weak demand for tablets worldwide will weigh on Asustek’s tablet shipments this year, which are likely to remain flat from last year’s 5.9 million units, Wu said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS