Smartphone shipments to China are expected to grow nearly 1.4-fold this year to 164 million units, strengthening its newly-claimed position as the world’s top smartphone market, a Qualcomm executive told reporters in Taipei yesterday, citing an unspecified report.
By next year, shipments will jump to 270 million units, with a big portion comprising low-cost smartphones costing about 1,000 yuan (US$159), Qualcomm vice president and managing director of Asia, China James Shen (沈勁) said.
Growing popularity of low-cost smartphones from Chinese brands made that possible, Shen said. Last year, smartphone shipments to China topped 70 million units, he said.
A rapid shift to 3G networks from 2G technology also helped boost the adoption of smartphones, Shen said. Qualcomm has more than 80 Chinese 3G customers and many of them used to focus on making 2G handsets in the past, he added.
China became the world’s biggest smartphone market by units in the third quarter of last year, overtaking the US, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Shipments to China expanded to an historical high of 24 million during the quarter, exceeding the 23 million units shipped to the US, Strategy Analytics’ statistics showed.
Qualcomm counts China’s major handset makers, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd (華為) and ZTE Corp (中興), as well as Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi Corp (小米), as its clients. Qualcomm has a US$100 million investment in Xiaomi.
The investment was based on the company’s long-term support for innovation and to telecoms operator partners, Shen said.
Xiaomi announced on Feb. 8 that it had launched CDMA version handsets with China Telecom (中國電信).
Shen also expects price-driven competition in the Chinese market to intensify this year. Qualcomm aims to grow its market share in China with proper pricing strategies, he said. He did not give details.
Last year, Qualcomm sold 15 times more smartphone chips to China than in the previous year, he said.
To boost Qualcomm’s brand awareness in China, the US chipmaker plans to launch a campaign later this month that includes giving a Chinese name to its Snapdragon chipset series.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS