Apple Inc's iPhone 17 series today went on sale in Taiwan, with local carriers offering early bird incentives and some enthusiasts lining up days in advance.
The four new models — the 6.3-inch iPhone 17, 6.5-inch iPhone Air, 6.3-inch iPhone 17 Pro and 6.9-inch iPhone 17 Pro Max — are priced from NT$29,900, the same starting price as last year, but with double the minimum storage at 256GB.
Taiwan's major telecoms held launch events in Taipei.
Photo: Wu Pei-hua, Taipei Times
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) offered vouchers worth NT$3,600 to 360 customers who had registered online, including 80 who had signed up for its launch, while Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) staged a Formula One-themed display at its flagship store at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.
Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) offered NT$4,000 discounts off contract prices for the first 50 customers at its Taipei direct store, as well as similar offers at branches in Taichung and Kaohsiung.
Enthusiasts began queuing days in advance at all three major telecoms.
Photo: Huang Chao-hsiang, Taipei Times
At Apple's direct store in Taipei's Xinyi District (信義), a 36-year-old digital advertising worker surnamed Hsu (徐) was the first in line for a third consecutive year, arriving at 5am today to pick up his preordered iPhone 17 Pro Max in dark blue.
He said that he was most interested in the upgraded front camera that automatically rotates for horizontal selfies and the main camera's eight times optical zoom for taking photographs of distant scenes.
UNION DETERMINATION: Rejecting an offer for a one-time payout as an attempt to influence opinion, the union said a strike at the memory chip manufacturer is possible The Micron Taiwan workers’ union yesterday rejected a one-time payout unveiled by US-based Micron Technology Inc last week, saying it wants a long-term mechanism under which employees would share 15 percent of the company’s operating profits. While the union and the company are still in talks over the dispute, the reward package was proposed unilaterally by the employer without reaching an agreement with the union, union head Jerry Lin (林哲瑞) told reporters. Lin said he suspected the company was seeking to influence public opinion with the move. On Friday last week, Micron announced a reward package under which employees in Taiwan would receive
BUILDER’s RITES: The topping out ceremony is held when a project being built has its highest point laid out, a sure sign that TSMC’s European project is making solid progress A “topping out” ceremony was held on Monday at a plant under construction in Germany by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), indicating that the fab is progressing as planned and within budget, the head of a joint-venture company in charge of the project said. A topping out ceremony is the construction milestone of laying the final beam or structural piece at the highest point of a building, and it honors the construction crew, architects and engineers. European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (ESMC) president Christian Koitzsch said that about 2,000 workers from 106 countries are working around the clock at the site in
SOME CUSHION: Taiwan’s GDP is forecast to grow more than 11 percent this year, so the economy should be able to absorb the impact of a rate hike, an expert said With domestic inflation topping the 2 percent alert level for a fourth consecutive month last month and several major central banks around the world raising their key interest rates, Taiwan’s central bank is facing growing pressure to raise rates at its quarterly policymaking meeting on Thursday, economists said. At its June meeting, the central bank left interest rates unchanged for the ninth consecutive quarter, with the discount rate at 2 percent. Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) had said that the bank maintained a somewhat hawkish stance, with two board directors voicing support for a rate hike at the meeting. Cathay United
APPEAL: Any agreement to produce advanced memory such as HBM or DRAM could run into opposition from Seoul as those technologies are sensitive, sources said South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc is in talks with Intel Corp about a deal that would see it manufacture memory chips on US soil for the first time, three people familiar with the discussions said. Under one potential scenario, SK Hynix would lease part of Intel’s long-planned chipmaking facility in Ohio, they said. Under another scenario, it could form a venture with Intel and major cloud firms that are keen to lock in memory supplies, two of the people said. A deal would relieve pressure on Intel, which has been struggling, and mark a big win for US President Donald
RSS