The number of mobile phone users in Taiwan has more than doubled since last year: at the end of November Taiwan had roughly 10.3 million users, up from 5 million at the beginning of the year, government statistics show.
According to the Directorate of General Telecommunications under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) (
The penetration rate of mobile phone users in Taiwan jumped from 7 percent in 1997 to 47 percent this year.
Although the DGT declined to reveal the number of subscribers of each mobile phone service operator in order to protect corporate privacy, Pacific Communications Services (
Commencing operations in January 1998, it took Pacific Communications only 11 months to amass its first million users, and 20 months to reach two million in August 1999.
KG Telecommunications (和信1q) also announced in early December that its number of subscribers had reached 1.9 million by the end of November, accounting for 18 percent of the market. The company said it made a NT$400 million profit in the first half of this year and it expects a NT$1 billion profit this year.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co, Ltd (遠傳1q信) said that the number of its "effective revenue producing customers," excluding the number of users canceling their services and having yet to use their pre-paid mobile phone cards, has now reached 1.72 million. The company said that it doubted the credibility of user numbers released by other mobile phone service providers, claiming that several market research studies done by the company showed that the actual number of mobile phone users in Taiwan has yet to "exceed 10 million."
Far EasTone projects its sales this year to be NT$20 billion, double last year's NT$7.5 billion. The company also said it will start realizing a profit this year. Far Eas-Tone registered a loss of NT$600 million in 1998 but the company registered NT$8.84 billion sales and NT$1.25 billion pre-tax profit for the first half of this year.
TransAsia Telecommunications (泛亞1q信) said it had 50,000 users at the end of November while Mobitai Communications (東信1q) said it had 40,000 subscribers. TransAsia said it registered NT$3.92 billion in revenues from January to September and turned a profit of NT$400 million. The company now hopes for NT$5 billion in revenues and NT$600 million in profit for this year. Mobitai projects its revenues at NT$3.5 billion and profits of NT$200 million.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS