Chinese smartphone start-up Xiaomi Corp (小米) yesterday partnered with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to sell its phones in Taiwan as part of a push to double its global shipments to 40 million units this year.
Xiaomi last year shipped 18.7 million units worldwide, company co-founder and president Bin Lin (林斌) said during a media briefing to unveil the company’s latest flagship model, the Mi3, in Taipei yesterday.
With its home market its biggest contributor to sales, Xiaomi is aggressively exploring new markets, such as Southeast Asia, to seek further growth, Lin said.
Photo: CNA
Xiaomi, based in Shenzhen, will make its first move by tapping the Singaporean market early next month after Xiaomi Global vice president Hugo Barra first revealed the company’s overseas expansion plans in Taipei in December last year.
Chunghwa Telecom, the nation’s top telecom, joins local peer Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) in offering the Mi3. Far EasTone sells the phone in a package that includes a screen protector for NT$10,599.
Last year, Far EasTone obtained the exclusive rights to sell Xiaomi smartphones, including the Mi2 and the Red Rice in Taiwan.
Xiaomi sold more than 200,000 phones in Taiwan last year, according to Far EasTone.
Presales of the Mi3 are scheduled to begin today at Far EasTone and Chunghwa Telecom stores.
Consumers can get a free Mi3 by signing up for a Far EasTone service plan with a minimal monthly fee of NT$1,773, or subscribing to Chunghwa Telecom’s service plan and paying a NT$1,143 minimum monthly fee.
The Mi3 will be also available on Xiaomi’s Web site for NT$9,999 from Wednesday next week.
The Mi3 is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip and a 5-inch high-definition screen.
Separately, Far EasTone vice president Maxwell Cheng (鄭智衡) said yesterday that the company plans to purchase 2.5 million smartphones this year, half of them entry-level models.
NXP Semiconductors NV expects its first automotive-grade 5-nanometer chip built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to become available for automakers within one-and-a-half years at the earliest, following demand for better computing performance and energy efficiency for connected vehicles, a company executive said yesterday. That would mean a significant upgrade from the 16-nanometer technology NXP adopted in its existing series of microprocessors. NXP chief technology executive Lars Reger made the remarks during a media briefing yesterday in Taipei. The latest updates came after NXP unveiled its plan to source 5-nanometer capacity from TSMC in 2021. This is Reger’s first trip to
EVADING US CONTROLS? ‘These surveillance chips are relatively easy to manufacture compared to smartphone processors,’ a source said about HiSilicon’s components A Huawei Technologies Co (華為) unit is shipping new Chinese-made chips for surveillance cameras in a fresh sign that the Chinese tech giant is finding ways around four years of US export controls, two sources briefed on the unit’s efforts said. The shipments to surveillance camera manufacturers from the company’s chip design unit, HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), started this year, said one of the sources and a third source familiar with the industry supply chain. One of the sources briefed on the unit said that at least some of the customers were Chinese. Huawei unveiled new smartphones in the past few weeks that
CENTRAL BANK: The consumer price index would grow while core CPI is set to move forward at a milder rate, the governor said, adding that the GDP forecast is down The central bank yesterday kept its policy rate unchanged for the second straight quarter, saying that a rate pause would help support the economy, as consumer prices have moderated and would return to the 2 percent target next year. “The board gave unanimous support to a policy hold, although some members voiced concern over lingering inflationary pressures and called for close monitoring,” central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told a media briefing after its quarterly board meeting. The consumer price index (CPI) would grow 1.83 percent next year, while core CPI after stripping out volatile items would advance a milder 1.73 percent,
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
RSS