"Smart phones" -- data-centric handheld devices with additional voice functionality -- will continue to eat into the market share of personal data assistants (PDAs) in Taiwan because of their improving external design and better quality cameras, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said in a report yesterday.
During the third quarter of last year, robust sales of smart phones led to stagnation in PDA sales, IDC said in its latest report.
Sales of pure PDAs accounted for a third of the total sales of handheld devices in Taiwan during the third quarter of last year, down from 45 percent a year earlier because of lower prices for handheld gadgets with operating systems and additional voice-call functionality, IDC said.
The external design of smart phones has also improved, it added.
"Some [smart phone] models are now equipped with a [high-end] mega-pixel camera, but have a similar price to an average mobile phone," said Sunny Chen (陳睿聆), an analyst at IDC's local branch, in the report.
PDAs and smart phones are wireless handheld gadgets embedded with operating systems from Microsoft, or Symbian, which allow users to process data like computers.
"Some consumers have no idea that they are buying smart phones," Chen said.
During the July-September period, sales of all handheld devices soared by around 47 percent to 109,945 units, compared to less than 80,000 units in the same period last year, according to statistics compiled by IDC.
Looking ahead, Chen expects smart phones to be the rising star and take more market share from PDAs in the nation's handheld devices sector.
IDC estimated that handheld devices would grow 15 percent in the final quarter of last year from the third quarter helped mostly by increasing demand for smart phones as vendors launched more new models to spur demand.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS