Smartphone brand HTC Corp (宏達電) on Thursday unveiled a new entry-level phone — the Desire 19s — hoping to capitalize on the peak consumer spending season at the end of the year.
The new smartphone is equipped with a 6.2-inch touch screen with in-plane switching technology, and has a resolution of 720 x 1,520 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19:9.
The Desire 19s is priced at NT$5,990 (US$196), suggesting that HTC could be positioning it as an option for the government when it procures phones for civil servants.
The Desire 19s is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Helio P22 processor and runs a 3850mAh battery, comes in a single 3GB plus 32GB storage option and is available in two colors — blue and black — HTC said.
HTC will be hoping the phone boosts its sales after the company on Wednesday said that its third-quarter gross margin rose for the seventh consecutive quarter, but that it still posted a quarterly loss for the 16th time in 17 quarters.
The only time HTC has reported a quarterly profit since the first quarter of 2015 was in the first quarter of last year, when its bottom line benefited from the sale of its original design manufacturer assets to Alphabet Inc’s Google.
HTC’s gross margin rose to 22.9 percent in the third quarter, up 2.6 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, but it posted a net loss of NT$2.36 billion, or a loss per share of NT$2.86, compared with a net loss per share of NT$3.18 in the same period last year.
While the company has been squeezed by fierce competition in the global smartphone market, HTC’s gross margin has continued to improve on the back of its efforts to develop virtual-reality technologies, it said.
The appointment of Yves Maitre as chief executive in September would see the firm continuing to develop new virtual-reality technologies, HTC said.
Maitre previously served as executive vice president of consumer equipment and partnership at Orange SA.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained