Handset manufacturers are increasingly turning to emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region for sales growth amid waning consumer sentiment in Europe, analysts said yesterday.
Huang Chin-ying (黃勤穎), an analyst at the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center, said Western Europe’s sales growth fell to 12.8 percent by volume last year, showing that sales momentum in the region was clearly slowing down.
By comparison, mobile phone unit sales grew 49 percent in North America and 146 percent in the Asia-Pacific region last year. Huang predicted that the annual growth rate in Western Europe would be even lower this year.
Wang Yang (王陽), an analyst at IHS iSuppli Asia Shanghai Ltd, said a growing number of handset makers are increasing shipments to China. He also noted a growing low-end smartphone market there, with Chinese consumers increasingly choosing generic brands or low-cost mobile phones made by local firms such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Xiaomi Technology Co (小米科技), he said.
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) said at its quarterly investor conference in April that its declining market share in the US would likely be offset by strong demand in Asia, especially in China.
However, Lu Chun-kuan (呂俊寬), a senior research analyst at Gartner Taiwan, said that mobile sales in China declined by volume in the first quarter of this year, saying that such an “unexpected decline” had more impact on markets than the “expected” sales drop in Europe.
China is facing a turning point, not only in consumer preferences — with a majority of Chinese now favoring low-end smartphones —- but also in changes in its retail market, factors that the mobile phone market needs to consider, Lu said.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
For the second year in a row, a Brazilian movie has wowed international audiences and critics, securing multiple Oscar nominations and drawing fresh interest in the Latin American giant’s film industry. Experts say the success of The Secret Agent, which has won four Oscar nominations, a year after I Am Still Here won Brazil its first Oscar, is no fluke, with a bit of a push from the country’s political climate. “This is neither a coincidence nor a miracle. It is the result of a lot of work, consistent policies, and, of course, talent,” Ilda Santiago, director of the Rio International Film
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
IShowSpeed, a 21-year-old African-American influencer, has raced a cheetah, leapt with Maasai warriors and drawn huge crowds in a month-long tour of Africa that has also busted cliches about the continent. The YouTube and Twitch star’s tour, which started on Dec. 29 last year, took him to 20 countries, showing his tens of millions of followers a different side of Africa as he visited a diamond mine in Botswana, discovered Ethiopia’s rich cuisine and attended the Africa Cup of Nations football final in Morocco. IShowSpeed — born in Cincinnati, Ohio as Darren Jason Watkins Jr. — is one of the most followed
RSS