Apple Inc passed Samsung Electronics Co to become the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter on surging sales of its iPhone, Gartner Inc said.
Almost a quarter of smartphones sold were iPhones as Apple’s market share rose to 23.8 percent from 15.8 percent a year earlier, the Stamford, Connecticut-based researcher said. Apple sold 35.5 million smartphones to consumers while Samsung sold 34 million, Gartner said.
Global sales of such handsets that use computer-like processors and can handle business e-mail and streaming video increased 47 percent to 149 million units. Apple’s sequential growth may slow this quarter as pent-up demand was largely sated by holiday sales, Roberta Cozza, a Gartner analyst based in Egham, UK, said in an interview.
“The wild card for [this year] is China,” Cozza said.
“If Apple closes a deal with China Telecom (中國電信) or China Mobile (中國移動) they could see their units double in that market,” he said.
Gartner forecast 39 percent growth in smartphones this year, slowing from 58 percent last year. Google Inc’s Android software ran on more than half of all smartphones sold, according to Gartner.
Nokia Oyj’s smartphone market share fell to 12 percent, from about 30 percent a year earlier, putting it third, Cozza said. Nokia’s share declined as the Finnish company shifted its focus to Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone software and phased out the 10-year-old Symbian line.
The introduction of Nokia’s Lumia handsets didn’t stem a decline in Microsoft’s market share, which dropped to 1.9 percent from 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter, Gartner said. Cozza said she expects Windows Phone to reach an 8.6 percent share of smartphones by the end of the year.
Apple’s smartphone success made it the world’s third-largest vendor of handsets overall, passing LG Electronics Co, which fell to fifth place behind ZTE Corp (中興). Nokia kept its position as the biggest vendor with a 23.4 percent share, narrowing its lead over Samsung to 4 percentage points.
Gartner forecast overall mobile phone growth at 7 percent this year, slowing from 11.1 percent last year.
iPad 3
In related news, Apple is testing a tablet computer with a smaller screen than the hot-selling iPad, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper, quoting unidentified people familiar with the situation, said the California gadget-maker was working with component suppliers in Asia to test the tablet computer with a smaller display.
The Journal quoted officials at Apple suppliers as saying the company has shown them screen designs for a device with a 20cm display.
The iPad has a 24.6cm screen. Apple has sold more than 55 million iPads since launching the device in April 2010.
The Journal said Apple was working with Taiwan’s AU Optronics Co (AUO, 友達光電) and South Korea’s LG Display Co to supply the test panels.
The newspaper cautioned that Apple frequently works with suppliers to test new designs and “could opt not to proceed with the device.”
Apple reportedly plans to unveil a new version of the iPad in the first week of March. According to the Journal, the “iPad 3” will have a higher resolution screen than the iPad 2 but will be the same size.
Both Amazon.com Inc and Samsung Electronics Co offer smaller and lower-priced tablets than the iPad.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS