Dopod International Corp (多普達), a new player in Taiwan's 6 million mobile-handset market, yesterday unveiled its second Windows-based smartphone, after debuting its first model, the Dopod565, two months ago.
"As our first model jumped to be the second-highest seller on online handset trading site Wantgo.com.tw (網購) soon after the August launch, ? we believe Dopod is well on the way to become a top smartphone brand," chief executive Jack Tong (董良俊) said yesterday.
Dopod has every reason to be optimistic, as the vendor sold over 4,000 Dopod565 models in the first 40 days after its rollout, Tong said.
Consumers still have to queue up for the phone, which includes Internet access, a work planner and entertainment functions, he added.
Dopod launched its first smartphone on the domestic market this year after operating in China for two years. Although a latecomer to this line of business compared to local rival Mitac International Corp (神達電腦), an industry watcher said that Dopod holds the upper hand in having grabbed a slice of the thriving smartphone domestic market.
"Dopod has strong technology and manufacturing support from High Tech Computer Corp (
High Tech Computer is the nation's top smartphone contract maker for global brands such as T-Mobile International and Orange SA, a handset arm of France Telecom SA. Wang, a daughter of business tycoon Wang Yung-ching (
In contrast, Mitac, a local pioneer in the smartphone segment, is struggling to stay in the market.
Early this year, Mitac decided to slow its expansion, citing limited acceptance of high-end mobile phones. The move came after Mitac's launch of two clamshell models under the Mio brand in the past 18 months.
As part of its restructuring plan, Mitac spun off its own-brand business and became a smartphone and PDA contract maker. Mio Technology Ltd (
"We don't have any plan to unveil new models soon until [we outline] new strategies," said an official who requested anonymity.
BenQ Corp (
The company said earlier that it wanted to unveil its first smartphone by the end of the year. Analysts said the postponement may be due to a weakness in developing new products.
Smartphones are expected to account for 4 percent of the 600 million cellphones sold worldwide this year, up significantly from less than 2 percent -- or 9 million out of 520 million total handsets sold last year, Chang said.
"We believe the strong growth will be sustained through the next few years, to 2008," Chang said.
Despite an ambition to become the nation's top maker of high-end cellphones, Dopod faces fierce competition from bigger rivals, including Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AG, for the top position.
Sony Ericsson's P900 Symbian-based model became a hit shortly after its rollout at the beginning of the year.
The Japanese-Swedish company plans to unveil an enhanced model, the P910i, next month.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS