Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) on Friday said that the launch of the iPhone XS series could improve its average revenue per user (ARPU) next quarter, as most people are subscribing to services packages carrying higher monthly fees.
“We are optimistic that the new full-screen iPhones will stimulate replacement demand from our subscribers,” chairman David Cheng (鄭優) told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s launch of the iPhone XS. “That may give a boost to the company’s ARPU.”
Local telecom operators have seen their ARPU spiral downward over the past few years due to intensifying price competition. In May, the competition became even stiffer as all major telecoms cut 4G flat rates to a record low of NT$499 a month, reducing their ARPU.
Two million mobile users switched to the NT$499 rate plan on a two-year service contract, National Communications Commission statistics showed.
To further spur iPhone replacement demand, Chunghwa Telecom on Friday said that those who have subscribed to the NT$499 plan would be eligible to switch plans and get a new phone without paying a penalty.
The company registered the lowest ARPU at NT$581 among the nation’s top three telecoms for the first three months of this year, compared with Taiwan Mobile Co’s (台灣大哥大) NT$825 and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co’s (遠傳電信) NT$843.
Chunghwa Telecom did not provide ARPU figures for the second quarter.
Far EasTone said it also expects the new iPhones to help improve revenue and raise ARPU.
About 70 percent of new iPhone buyers have so far chosen the iPhone XS Max, the most expensive of the three new iPhones, the company said on Friday.
Most people who wanted an iPhone subscribed to its NT$1,399 plan to make the pricey smartphone more affordable, Far EasTone vice president T.Y. Yin (尹德洋) said.
Taiwan Mobile said it found that about 85 percent of those who had purchased an iPhone subscribed to its NT$1,399 plan, down from 90 percent over the past few years.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to