HTC Corp (宏達電) expects smartphone sales in Taiwan to climb by a double-digit percentage this quarter from last quarter, fueled by the launches of flagship and mid-end handsets, a top executive said yesterday.
Sales of the company’s HTC 10 smartphone in the firm’s home market exceeded its expectations, HTC North Asia president Jack Tong (董俊良) told Central News Agency on the sidelines of a product launch ceremony.
HTC launched a flagship model in the Taiwan market at the beginning of last month, and yesterday introduced two mid-tier smartphones — the HTC Desire 830 ,priced at NT$9,990 (US$307.40), and the HTC Desire 825, which retails at NT$7,990.
Apart from expectations of improved sales, revenue in the Taiwanese market this quarter is also expected to outpace the figure for the first quarter, Tong said.
In related news, the company on Monday night said it is to sell a plot of land at its manufacturing plant in Taoyuan for NT$2.88 billion, as part of its continued efforts to lower operation costs and improve its efficiency.
This the second time in the past six months that HTC has sold plots of its land at its Taoyuan plant. In December last year, it agreed to sell a parcel of land and a building at the plant to Inventec Corp (英業達) for NT$6.06 billion.
Given that the 13,576.2 ping (4,106.8m2) plot of land in the current sale does not house any of the firm’s production facilities, the transaction will not affect the company’s production capacity, HTC said.
The company said that the purpose of selling the property is not to narrow the size of its net losses, but to optimize the efficiency of its unused land.
The company declined to disclose any information about the individual buyer, saying that unlike the previous land transaction, the buyer is not one of HTC’s companies or subsidaries.
“A non-operating gain of NT$990 million will be booked at the end of this quarter or at the beginning of next quarter,” an HTC official said by telephone.
The company is likely to shed more light on its business outlook for this quarter during a teleconference on Monday next week.
In the first quarter, the company posted consolidated revenue of NT$14.82 billion, down 64.31 percent from the NT$41.52 billion posted in the same period last year.
HTC shares declined 0.73 percent to NT$81.8 in Taipei trading yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which fell 1 percent.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
RSS