The nation's personal digit assistant (PDA) contract makers will not feel immediate damage from shrinking demand for the handheld devices in face of the threat from smartphones, analysts said yesterday.
The analysts were responding to a Gartner Inc report showing lower PDA shipments last year.
Global PDA shipments declined 5.3 percent to 11.5 million units last year from the previous year due to the impact of smartphones and advanced phones, Gartner Inc said in a statement released over the weekend.
"I don't expect to see a quick impact," said Yang Hui-an (
"Some PDA makers did convert some of their manufacturing facilities for smartphones, but Taiwanese makers will be able to maintain their global market share in the short term, despite the dismal outlook for PDAs," she added.
With increased orders from international vendors, Taiwanese PDA manufacturers are expected to see that global market share grew around 20 percent last year from the previous year to around 54.6 percent, with 6.3 million units shipped during the period. That would represent an increase of 52.9-percent year on year, according to Yang's report released last Thursday.
Though the PDA market is shrinking, the demand for handheld devices that combine some of the functions of PDAs, such as personal information management, with cellphone service is growing, said Roger Lin (林峻毅), an analyst at Pacific Securities Co (太平洋證券).
That will give domestic PDA manufacturers an advantage in switching to that area as most manufacturers are capable of producing such devices no matter what they are called, Lin said.
"I'm not pessimistic about the outlook for local PDA makers," he said.
Motorola Inc's V-series smartphones, made by Taiwan's Compal Electronics Corp (
Peggy Chang (
"Smartphones will significantly eat into the PDA market due to the lack of new functions developed by PDA vendors, which will force local companies to extend business to other areas," Chang said.
Some handsets such as Sony Ericsson's P800 offer complete personal information management functions similar to a PDA's and can serve as an option for those who do not like PDAs, she said.
"That has reflected on local PDA original-equipment-manufacturing companies' revenue," Chang said.
High Tech Computer Corp (宏達電子), Taiwan's largest PDA maker, hopes its smartphone business can increase its sales contribution to around 40 percent this year, she said.
Global smartphone shipments are expected to jump to around 27.59 million units this year and surge to 80.6 million in 2006, according to Topology.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS