Smartphone sales in Taiwan last year fell nearly 10 percent from the previous year, due in part to disappointing sales of Apple Inc’s latest iPhones unveiled in September last year, industry sources said.
Competition among the nation’s major telecom operators that led to large subscription fee discounts, such as a NT$499 per month unlimited data plan, resulted in many subscribers extending their contracts and retaining their devices instead of buying new ones, the sources said.
Smartphone sales fell 9.84 percent from a year earlier to 6.6 million units, or less than 600,000 units a month, the lowest monthly figure in more than a decade, they said.
Several telecom operators plan to boost smartphone sales this year by offering discounts on handsets, but the weakness is expected to continue, as the market has become saturated, the sources said, adding that sales are expected to range between 6.3 million and 6.5 million units.
Apple remained the top brand in Taiwan in terms of sales volume last month with a 28.3 percent market share, ahead of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co (18.8 percent), Asustek Computer Inc (華碩, 9.7 percent), China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀, 9 percent) and Japan’s Sony Corp (6.5 percent).
In terms of sales value, Apple took a 62.4 percent market share last month, followed by Samsung (12.2 percent), Oppo (5.3 percent), Sony (4.7 percent) and Asustek (4.0 percent), the sources said.
By model, the iPhone XR 128GB was the top-selling model last month, ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy A7, the iPhone XS 64GB, the iPhone XS Max 256GB, the Oppo AX5, the iPhone XS 256GB, the Oppo R17, the Galaxy J4, the Asustek ZenFone Live L1 and the Galaxy Note 9, the sources said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy