Color-display phones with built-in cameras will be a mild catalyst for sales despite the absence of killer applications in the cellphone segment, industry officials and analysts said yesterday.
"Color-screens and embedded cameras will be standard equipment for our new models next year," said Tom Hsiao (
"Consumers will see no more gray-scale Moto mobile pones in April as we expect our V60 and V66 models will be off the shelves of local handset shops," Hsiao added.
Motorola, the largest mobile phone vendor in Taiwan with a 27 percent market share, plans to roll out 20 to 30 new models next year. To cater to Asian customer's tastes, the company said 70 percent of their new models will be clamshell-style phones.
Most industry watchers expected to see handset replacement increase next year. But, "without killer applications to bring booming demand, those with embedded digital cameras and color display phones will be a catalyst for the stable handset market," said Steven Tseng (
Tseng predicted global mobile phone shipments would rise by as much as 10 percent next year from this year, boosted by the ongoing replacement of monochromatic-screen phones.
International research institute IDC said global mobile phone shipments reached 471 million units this year and expects the number to reach about 620 million units in 2007 on an annual growth rate of 7 percent.
In mature markets, color-screen handsets comprise a growing proportion of total sales, while the volume of camera phones is also increasing. Gartner analysts said demand for low-cost phones has also continued.
Expressing a similar view, Benny Lo (
Color-screen phones are expected to account for about 60 percent of total mobile phone shipments next year, up from more than 30 percent this year, he said.
While camera phones are likely to grab a bigger portion of total mobile phone shipments next year from 10 percent this year, Lo said growth momentum will be limited because of poor photo quality.
Motorola, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker, also plans to introduce at least three new smart phones to Taiwan next year, according to Hsiao.
There will exist a significant demand for smart phones during the second half of next year, accompanied by maturing 2.5-generation mobile phone services and the deployment of speedy third-generation (3G) infrastructure, Hsiao said.
Some analysts, however, have a different view about the growth potential of the smart phone market.
"We don't see strong demand coming out next year, as there is still a long way to go toward the fulfillment of providing 3G mobile services worldwide," Lo said.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
RSS