The nation’s 5G smartphone penetration rate is forecast to climb to 80 percent by the end of the year, as more affordable handsets become commercially available, Samsung Electronics Taiwan Co (台灣三星電子) said yesterday.
“The price of entry-level 5G handsets will probably drop to NT$7,000 to NT$8,000 by the end of the year,” Samsung Taiwan vice president Jacob Chen (陳啟蒙) told reporters during the launch of the company’s new flagship S21 5G smartphone series in Taipei.
That represents a significant price drop from NT$12,000 at present, he said.
Photo: CNA
Samsung is lowering handset prices as 5G component supply chains mature, Chen said, adding that folding phones are also likely to see a price drop.
Prices for the S21 series are NT$4,000 to NT$7,000 lower compared with the previous generation. Samsung expects sales of the new 5G phones to increase 20 percent compared with the S20 series, Chen said.
“The sales of flagship handsets were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,” he said.
However, market penetration for 5G accounts would lag significantly behind handset penetration, he said.
“Telecoms have been proactive in encouraging users to upgrade to 5G, but so far we haven’t seen a ‘killer app,’” he said.
Following the debut of 5G services last year, about 35 percent of Taiwanese mobile users are forecast to upgrade to 5G services by the end of this year, Chen said.
Noting that handsets priced at more than NT$20,000 account for 40 percent of the Taiwanese market, but make up 70 percent of the market value, Chen said the focus for Samsung is on the flagship model market.
“We aim to be No. 1 in the Taiwan high-end Android market,” he said.
The S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra are to go on sale on Jan. 29 in Taiwan.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day