Apple Computer Inc yesterday introduced a broadcast feature to its red-hot iPod digital music players in Taiwan, hoping to secure a bigger market among music lovers locally.
The feature, Podcast Directory service, is an audio program that users pull off the Internet and download onto digital music players or similar devices for listening to at their leisure.
"We are working with 10 radio stations here and consumers will be able to listen to them over at iTunes within a month," Yeo Eng Yiong, Apple's product marketing manager for portables in the Asia-Pacific region, said at a media briefing yesterday.
These radio stations include UFO Radio (飛碟電台), Kiss Radio, Broadcasting Corp of China (中廣) and International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT), he said, adding that the company may add more partners to the service at a later stage.
Besides the 10 channels, the service in iTunes, its digital music software and online music store, features over 3,000 free overseas audio programs, making it one of the largest Podcast directories in the world, featuring favorites such as ABC News, BBC, Disney, ESPN and Newsweek.
According to Yeo, integrating broadcasting with digital music players has been gaining popularity among consumers over the last two years. The company therefore incorporated this new feature in iTunes in June this year, "hoping to offer more content to users," he said.
The company claimed that just two days after the launch of its Podcast Directory in the US, iTunes customers have subscribed to more than 1 million Podcasts.
According to Yeo, over 20 million iPods have been sold worldwide as of June. He declined to reveal the sales figures in Taiwan.
According to the latest statistics from research company GfK, iPod is Taiwan's No. 1 digital music player in terms of sales.
Despite reaping great profits from iPod sales, Apple is still hesitant to bring its iTunes Music Store to Taiwan, because local consumers are still downloading songs via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing Web sites instead of using online music stores.
A court ruling that favors P2P file-sharing platforms further scares prospective online music vendors from entering the market.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS