Taiwan witnessed its share of the global smartphone assembly business fall in the first quarter of this year amid escalating competition in the world market, market information advisory firm International Data Corp (IDC) said on Friday.
According to IDC, Taiwan’s share of the global smartphone assembly industry fell to 23.4 percent in the January-to-March period, down from 28.5 percent recorded in the fourth quarter of last year.
China expanded its presence in the sector during the first quarter, IDC said.
China’s share of the global smartphone assembly industry rose to 44.1 percent in the three-month period, from 40.1 percent seen in the previous quarter, IDC said.
IDC senior research manager Sean Kao (高鴻翔) said China’s smartphone assembly industry got a boost from an increase in shipments of first-tier Chinese smartphone brands.
Kao said smartphone brands in the US, Europe and Japan reduced their outsourcing orders and also increased their in-house production in a bid to cut costs and take on rising competition, and under such unfavorable circumstances, Taiwan’s smartphone assembly firms saw their orders fall in the first quarter.
In addition, Taiwan’s smartphone production in terms of volume for the first quarter fell 14.9 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, IDC said.
In the January-to-March period, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co retained its title as the largest smartphone assembler in the world, followed by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Pegatron Corp (和碩). The two Taiwanese firms’ rankings in the first quarter were unchanged from the previous quarter, the IDC data showed.
China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動) ranked as the fourth-largest smartphone assembler in the first quarter, ahead of China’s Vivo Electronics Corp (維沃移動通信) in fifth place, South Korea’s LG Electronics Co in sixth, China’s Huaqin Technology Co (華勤通訊技術) in seventh, ZTE Corp (中興) in eighth, Flextronics International Ltd in ninth place and Gionee Communication Equipment Co (金立) rounding out the top 10, IDC said.
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