Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecoms carrier, yesterday launched its first BlackBerry smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM), ending Taiwan Mobile Co’s (台灣大哥大) five-year exclusive right to sell the phone in Taiwan.
The partnership would extend to the sale of RIM’s new tablet device, dubbed the PlayBook, CHT said. RIM’s PlayBook is expected to hit the company’s stores next quarter, said Shi Mu-piao (石木標), a vice president of Chunghwa Telecom.
“The sale of RIM’s BlackBerry will help increase the number of corporate customers for us,” Shih said.
“We think it’s the right time to introduce BlackBerry phones as they are now equipped with the popular touchscreen feature as well as Chinese input, which is important [for Taiwanese], but had not been available before,” Shih added.
The telecoms carrier expects sales of BlackBerry phones to help boost the number of its corporate customers to about 1 million, up by 1 percent from 990,000 users now, Shih said, adding that the new subscription package includes a two-year free data transmission service to cater to the needs of corporate subscribers.
RIM’s tablet device, meanwhile, was targeting average consumers, Shih said.
RIM’s Blackberry Torch 9800 smartphone is now available at 80 outlets from Chunghwa Telecom and its handset retailer affiliate Senao International Co (神腦國際).
Meanwhile, Taiwan Mobile, the nation’s No.2 phone company, yesterday said it planned to introduce a remodeled Blackberry Torch 9800 later this quarter with a white casing instead of black, as well as the newly released BlackBerry Bold 9780, according to a company statement.
Taiwan Mobile also said it would launch RIM’s tablet device at an appropriate time.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
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