Despite the widely reported explosion of several Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, Samsung Electronics Co remained the largest smartphone vendor in Taiwan last year, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday.
A total of 8.74 million smartphones were sold in the nation last year, down 18 percent from 2015, IDC’s data showed.
It was the first year-on-year decline in smartphone sales in Taiwan, indicating that the market has reached a saturation point, IDC said.
Smartphones accounted for 95 percent of local handset sales last year, the data showed.
Samsung accounted for 22 percent of total smartphone sales, followed by Apple Inc’s 20 percent, IDC said.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) was the third-largest vendor, with an 18 percent share, followed by HTC Corp (宏達電), with a 15 percent share, and Sony Corp, which had 9 percent, IDC said.
Smartphones with larger-sized screens dominated the market last year, with phablets that have a display of 5.5-inch or larger accounting for about 50 percent of the local market.
Their share of the market is expected to increase to 84 percent this year, IDC said.
Separately, Apple has revealed plans to set up two more research centers and boost investment in China, a pivotal market in which the iPhone has been rapidly elbowed aside by local competitors.
The US company said it plans to build new research facilities in Shanghai and Suzhou, on top of centers already scheduled to open in Beijing and Shenzhen.
Apple also pledged to spend at least 3.5 billion yuan (US$507 million) on research institutions.
All four centers are to open later this year, the company said in a statement on its Chinese Web site.
They will help Apple cooperate with local partners and attract personnel from its local suppliers, as well as from top educational institutes, it said.
The company’s announcement comes after iPhone shipments fell for the first time in China on an annual basis last year, as local vendors, such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Oppo (歐珀) and Vivo (維沃), are eroding its market share with increasingly high-end devices.
Apple is counting on the release of the 10th anniversary iPhone later this year to bolster growth.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
COLLABORATION: Taiwan and the US could jointly find solutions to weaknesses in supply chain resilience for critical materials, focusing on mining and initial refinement Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals. At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and
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