Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) is scheduled to launch new middle-end smartphones on Wednesday in its latest efforts to boost market share by broadening its mid-tier product lineup.
The Taoyuan-based company on Thursday issued a media invitation, saying that HTC Greater China region president Jack Tong (董俊良) would be hosting a product launch event in Taipei on Wednesday. HTC is set to launch its new Desire smartphone series, the invitation read.
According to documents released by the National Communications Commission (NCC), HTC’s new smartphone products which have been approved by the government to go on sale include the Desire 700 dual sim, the HTC Desire 601 dual sim, the Desire 501 and the Desire 300.
On Aug. 3, HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) told reporters on the sidelines of a corporate event that HTC underestimated the importance of mid-end smartphones as the company shifted its focus to developing high-end smartphones.
“HTC is constantly learning while addressing each challenge,” the Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted Wang as saying in a report.
“I hope things can improve from the fourth quarter,” Wang said, adding that HTC had been adjusting its product mix and planning to launch more mid-end smartphone models during this quarter and next year.
HTC posted a net loss of NT$2.97 billion (US$100 million) for last quarter, its first quarterly loss since the fourth quarter of 1999, as it lacked mid-end and entry-level products amid lukewarm demand for its new flagship model.
In a report released on Nov. 6, Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) analyst Ange Wu (吳淵傑) said HTC would benefit from its partnership with China’s top three telecoms operators.
“We believe that the combined channels of the three carriers [China Unicom Ltd (中國聯通), China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) and China Telecom Corp Ltd (中國電信)] will stimulate sales volume,” Wu said.
SAMSUNG THREATENED?
“On the other hand, HTC’s strength in high and mid-end smartphones is likely to threaten Samsung and boost its share in the China market,” he added.
At a product launch event on Oct. 19, Tong told reporters that HTC had targeted the 10 most populated cities in China to sell its latest 5.9-inch One Max smartphone.
He said the move was part of the company’s efforts to expand its market share to 20 percent in China, adding that HTC will also be working closely with China’s largest telecom carrier China Mobile — which has a nearly 70 percent share of the Chinese market — to sell its One series flagship smartphones and Desire series mid-tier smartphones.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS