Smartphone sales in Taiwan grew 2.7 percent year-on-year to 1.38 million units in the first quarter of this year, marking the first annual increase over the past five years, International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday, attributing it to demand for high-end 5G-enabled smartphones.
Average selling prices also increased 14.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter due to a chip shortage and robust demand, it said.
“People prioritized the purchase of laptops and other related equipment over upgrading smartphones” during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, IDC associate research director Joey Yen (嚴蘭欣) said in a press release.
Photo courtesy of Sony Mobile Communication International Taiwan Branch
“As such, even though 5G services commenced in mid-2020 in Taiwan, it was not until the first quarter of 2021 that we saw year-on-year growth in smartphone sales,” she said.
Robust demand for Apple Inc’s 5G smartphone drove the year-on-year growth in smartphone sales during the first three months of this year.
Sales of iPhones grew 22.4 percent year-on-year in the quarter, lifting Apple’s market share in Taiwan from 34.3 percent to 40.9 percent, it said.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co ranked second, with a market share of 26.5 percent, followed by China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) at 8 percent, Vivo Communication Technology Co (維沃) at 6.9 percent and Xiaomi Corp (小米) at 6.2 percent, IDC data showed.
Xiaomi handset sales included those sold under the Xiaomi, Hongmi and Pocophone brands, IDC said.
Overall, the top five brands took up 88.5 percent of the local market in the first quarter, it said.
“Taiwan’s handset market is now increasingly dominated by the large players,” IDC said.
Taiwan’s smartphone market has been slowing since 2016, but Yen forecast that local sales this year would see year-on-year growth for the first time in six years.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS