The 4.7-inch iPhone 7 was the best-selling smartphone in Taiwan following its global launch last month, industry insiders said.
The new iPhone attracted consumers not only because of its novelty, but also because many consumers in the market for a high-end mobile phone turned away from Samsung Electronics Co’s Galaxy Note 7, which the company eventually stopped selling following a series of battery explosions and fires.
The iPhone 7 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus have been on sale in Taiwan since Sept. 16.
It was the first time Apple Inc included Taiwan in the first group of nations in which a new iPhone series went on sale.
The sources said the 128 gigabyte (GB) iPhone 7 was the best-selling smartphone by number of units last month, followed by the iPhone 7 Plus, this year’s version of Samsung’s Galaxy J7, Taiwan-based PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc’s (華碩) ZenFone 3 ZE552KL and the 32GB iPhone 7.
Asustek is one of several Taiwanese PC brands hoping to gain a foothold in the smartphone market to limit the negative impact of a slowdown in the global PC market.
Its ZenFone series targets the mid-range market.
Asustek’s ZenFone3 ZE520KL came in sixth ahead of Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp’s (宏達電) HTC Desire 728 dual-sim, Japan-based Sony Corp’s Xperia XA, telecom service provider Taiwan Mobile Co’s (台灣大) Amazing X3s and the ZenFone 2 Laser ZE550KL.
The Galaxy Note 7 was the best-selling handset in Taiwan in August, when it was launched worldwide.
Due to the warm reception of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple had the highest share of smartphone revenue in Taiwan last month at 61.6 percent, followed by Samsung, Asustek, HTC and Sony, the sources said.
In terms of sales volume, Apple also gained the No. 1 spot by taking a 29 percent share of the Taiwan market last month, ahead of Samsung, Asustek, HTC and Sony, the sources added.
This month, 684,000 smartphones have been sold in Taiwan, representing an increase of about 20,000 units from last month, the sources said.
It was the third consecutive month unit sales in Taiwan posted month-on-month growth, the sources added.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the