Samsung Electronics Co unveiled a new range of inexpensive smartphones for India, seeking to win back customers in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, and regain ground lost to Xiaomi Corp (小米) and other Chinese rivals.
The three M series devices, all priced below 20,000 rupees (US$282.75) apiece, would launch on Feb. 5 on the Samsung India online store, as well as Amazon India, the South Korean manufacturer said.
The cheapest of the range would sell for less than 10,000 rupees. The company would later take the devices to other markets.
“It’s aimed squarely and entirely at millennials who form a third of India’s 1.3 billion population and comprise half of the country’s online shoppers,” Samsung India senior vice president Asim Warsi said.
As smartphone sales growth sputters in saturated Western markets, every smartphone maker from Apple Inc to Samsung and Xiaomi are looking to India to boost their fortunes.
China is also the fastest-growing geography for sales, but, with only 24 percent of Indians owning smartphones, there is plenty of room for capturing new customers.
“The battleground in India is the mid-tier and low-tier smartphone segment, which is huge,” Gartner Inc analyst Anshul Gupta said. “Any vendor looking at volume, revenue or market share who aspires to be among the top five will have to operate in that segment.”
India is a fiercely competitive market. While price is a key factor, first-time smartphone buyers are also looking for value in terms of design and battery life. Cameras and their specs are an important consideration in selfie-crazy India. The M series would sport a 5000mAH battery, at least two cameras (the top end of the M series has three) and a 15.75cm screen size.
Samsung’s devices blanket the entire price spectrum in India. Its Samsung Galaxy Note 9 debuted in August at about 70,000 rupees, while its Galaxy J2 sells for less than a 10th of that, at 6,190 rupees.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
RSS