Shipment of Taiwan's basic/feature phones exceeds forecasts in 1Q '09

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: According to research of the Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) conducted as part of the ITIS project, shipment volume of the Taiwanese basic/feature phone industry in the first quarter of 2009 is estimated at 10.21 million units.

Even though shipment volume declined sequentially in the first quarter, it was still higher than the 9.42 million units originally forecast. Taiwanese shipment volume did not experience the steep declines which were forecast, and instead rebounded somewhat.

This also caused supply of upstream basic/feature phone component manufacturers to become tight. Meanwhile, ASP (Average Selling Price) of the Taiwanese industry increased from US$43 in the fourth quarter of 2008 to US$45 in the first quarter of 2009. This was caused by the increasing shipment share of EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) products and the fact that some ultra value-line models reached EOL (End of Life).

In the first quarter the Taiwanese basic/feature phone industry obtained rush orders, with companies such as CCI and Arima receiving orders from emerging markets including China, Brazil, Russia and India.

According to MIC Industry Analyst Eddie Tsai: "At the end of November 2008, international vendors significantly reduced orders for the Taiwanese industry, causing a large-scale decline of Taiwanese basic/feature phone shipments; at the beginning of 2009. However, international vendors discovered that channel inventories started to decline. They released orders to their Taiwanese production partners to replenish inventories."

Regarding different system technologies, the EDGE shipment share in the first quarter increased to 5.4 percent as Motorola gradually focused on EDGE in new basic/feature phone outsourcing. As for CDMA products, due to weakening demand, Nokia became more conservative in outsourcing products, causing the CDMA shipment share in Taiwan's
industry to fall 3.5 percentage points to 13.5 percent in the first quarter.

This CDMA decline was not related to the fact that Foxconn previously lost some Nokia engine board orders. WCDMA shipment share fell to 0.4 percent in the first quarter as some Qisda WCDMA models reached EOL. The GSM/GPRS shipment share increased slightly in the first quarter as the CDMA shipment share declined.