The nation’s two main telecoms are to restart “normal” sales of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd (華為) smartphones and plan to introduce the company’s latest model after the US granted the Chinese firm another 90-day reprieve on doing business with US enterprises.
This also means that Google is to continue supporting updates to Android-based apps on Huawei mobile phones, including Gmail, Google Map and YouTube, at least until Nov. 19.
The US in May blacklisted Huawei, banning US companies from doing business with the Chinese telecom giant due to national security concerns.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The first reprieve issued by Washington expired yesterday.
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) said that it would restart ordering Huawei smartphones following a regular procedure to meet customer demand rather than selling existing models, such as the Huawei P30 Pro, which it had purchased before May.
The nation’s biggest wireless services provider is scheduled to sell Huawei’s latest flagship phone in October at the earliest, an industry source said.
Chunghwa Telecom, which is 35 percent owned by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, was the first local telecom that suspended sales of Huawei’s new handsets in May.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) said that it also plans to introduce the latest Huawei smartphones, while still selling older models in brick-and-mortar stores and on its Web site.
“Far EasTone will continue offering existing Huawei models in stores and will introduce new models featuring Google Mobile Services,” the company said.
The decisions followed similar announcements from the firms’ Japanese peers.
KDDI Corp and Softbank Corp have already restarted Huawei phone sales, while NTT Docomo Inc is to begin accepting preorders today.
Huawei last quarter overtook Apple Inc to become the world’s No. 2 smartphone vendor after shipping 58.7 million units worldwide, seizing a 17.6 percent market share, while Apple shipped 33.8 million units for a 10 percent market share, International Data Corp statistics showed.
Samsung Electronics Co remained the top vendor with a 22.7 percent market share.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by