According to MIC (Market Intelligence Center), an ICT industry research institute based in Taipei, Taiwanese PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) shipment volume is projected to grow 8.5% to 16.2 million units in 2007, including 12.3 million PDA phones, 2.5 million GPS (Global Positioning System) PDAs, and 1.4 million pure PDAs. Affected by the off-season effect, Taiwanese market volumes of various PDA application ICs are expected to suffer slight declines in the first quarter of 2007. The overall Taiwanese PDA application IC market volume is expected to drop 6% to 3.3 million units.
The slackening growth can be attributed to stagnant capacity of the overall PDA market, as the growth of PDA phone shipment share to 90% merely serves to offset the contraction of pure PDA and GPS PDA shipment volumes. In addition, the entry of many Taiwanese mobile phone makers into the PDA market failed to expand the overall market scale, due to the similarity of their business models and the homogeneity of Windows Mobile, 3G/3.5G, and 2.8-inch products.
Overall, with 3G/3.5G models forecasted to overtake 2.5G models in shipment share and emerge as the market mainstream, growth rate of the overall application IC market volume is expected to surpass that of end-products.
In 2006, Taiwanese PDA phone application IC market volume grew significantly. The Taiwanese PDA industry saw a large-scale contraction of pure PDA shipment volume on the lack of major application innovations as well as the emergence of PDA phones incorporating mobile communications, which has upgraded PDA products from pure information products for corporate clients' to multimedia communications products.
Benefiting from the emergence of PDA phones as the mainstream products in the PDA market, the Taiwanese PDA industry scored a shipment volume growth of 10.7% in 2006, reaching 15.0 million units. The substantial growth of PDA phone shipment volume in turn boosted the Taiwanese market volume of key PDA phone ICs, such as basebands, transceivers, and PAs (Power Amplifiers), by a hefty 93.1% year-on-year to 10.8 million units.
Owing to the peak-season effect and mass shipments of several new models by Taiwanese makers, Taiwanese PDA shipment volume grew 4.2% year-on-year and 13.6% sequentially to 4.1 million units in the fourth quarter of 2006, boosting the Taiwanese PDA phone IC market volume by 31.7% sequentially to 3.5 million units.
Taiwanese AP (Application Processor) market volume rose 13.6% sequentially to 4.1 million units in the fourth quarter of 2006, thanks to the rollout of new models by ASUS, CCI, Eten, HTC, and IAC, as well as the peak-season effect and the slight sequential shipment volume growth of handheld devices without phone functionality, such as pure PDA and GPS PDA. Meanwhile, affected by the decline in share of products featuring high-end Intel XScale, ASP dropped to US$14.8, from US$14.9 in the third quarter. Market value, however, rose 12.9% sequentially to US$60.8 million.
Benefiting from the brisk shipment of HTC's major 3G model Hermes and new model Trinity, in addition to that of Mio's and Wistron's GPS PDAs, Samsung saw its market share leap to 27.6% in the fourth quarter, up from 22.8% in the third quarter. With the shipment of HTC's major models, including 2.8-inch Artimes, Herald, Excalibur, Wizard, and Prophet going strong, TI's market share advanced from 29.1% to 30.6%. The market share of AP market leader Intel continued to be squeezed by Samsung and TI, dropping to 41.7% in the fourth quarter, down 6.3 percentage points sequentially.
In addition to the menace posed by its rivals, Intel's decline in market share decline can also be attributed to higher costs and higher power consumption of its chips, prompting Taiwanese makers to switch to TI and Samsung chips for value-line PDA phones. As a result, Intel chips were only employed in higher-end PDA phone models.
Due to the sequential growth in Taiwanese PDA shipment volume, Taiwanese PDA Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi chip market volume hit 3.95 million, 1.49 million, and 2.54 million units in the fourth quarter respectively, up 28.2%, 24.5%, and 38.4% sequentially.
More information can be found in the following MIC reports: The Taiwanese PDA Application IC Market, 1Q 2007
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Market Intelligence Center, based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends, focusing on markets and industries in Asia-Pacific. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english