Global sales of mobile phones that can take, send and receive photographs rose 65 percent in the fourth quarter, boosted by new models from companies including Sharp Corp and Nokia Oyj, a market research group said.
Sales rose to 8.6 million units from 5.2 million during the previous three months, according to Strategy Analytics, a research company. Asia accounted for 80 percent of total camera-phone sales in the fourth quarter. Sharp sold 4 million of the 17.9 million camera phones bought around the world last year.
Handset makers have introduced the new models to encourage consumers to replace their old phones and spend more taking pictures, playing games and talking. Phones with cameras accounted for 4 percent of worldwide handset sales last year, including 7 percent in the fourth quarter, the report said.
In the fourth quarter, Western Europe accounted for 13 percent of total camera-phone sales, with North America and Eastern Europe each accounting for 2.3 percent. More than 70 percent of the European population already has a mobile phone.
Nokia, the word's biggest mobile-phone maker, last year sold 91 percent of the 2.2 million camera phones sold based on the GSM, or global system for mobile communications, standard. Samsung Electronics Co sold the most camera phones based on CDMA, or code-division multiple access technology, selling a quarter of the 5 million handsets based on that standard.
The figures don't include phones that come with an optional snap-on camera, the report said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS