Iphone Launch Spurs Apple Component Makers
The Age
Monday January 15, 2007
EXCITEMENT over the potential of Apple's iPhone, announced in San Francisco last week, has boosted shares in the Chinese and Taiwanese companies that make iPod components or assemble the music player.
Foxconn International Holdings shares, listed on the Hong Kong exchange, rose more than 4 per cent to close at $24.95 on Friday. Foxconn is one of a number of Asian companies contracted by Apple to make iPods and now expected to produce iPhones. Other companies expected to benefit include Hon Hai, the Taiwanese assembler of iPod nanos, which owns nearly 75 per cent of Foxconn. Hon Hai's shares rose a modest 0.6 per cent on Friday.A report by Citibank analysts expects a boom demand this year for iPhones to benefit component makers Sunrex Technology and Catcher Technology, both listed in Hong Kong, and Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea, a maker of the NAND flash memory used in iPods and the iPhone.Apple chief executive Steve Jobs says he will be happy with sales of 10 million iPhones in the US and Europe in the 2007-08 financial year (Asia and Australia will be supplied later in 2008). This, about 1 per cent of the global mobile phone market, is well below the 300 million phones industry leader Nokia plans to ship in 2007. Analysts suggest, however, that iPhone demand will exceed Mr Jobs' estimate.Comment from mobile phone makers against which the iPhone will compete has been limited. However, Kim Jeong-han, senior vice-president for telecommunications at Samsung, said during the announcement of fourth-quarter results on Friday that iPhone's arrival could affect high-end phone sales but would also expand the market generally for multi-featured devices.Asia's fleet-footed technology companies are also expected to rush out copy-cats of the iPhone. Citigroup says this will produce greater demand for NAND, the solid-state flash memory used in iPod nano and shuffle models. The advent of the iPhone could benefit Samsung in several ways. It is a leading supplier of LCD (liquid crystal display) technology to Apple and is also the world's largest maker of memory chips, and already a supplier of NAND flash memory to Apple for its iPods.Apple is prepared to defend its technology against copyists and cloners, and has more than 200 international patents covering the device. Meantime, confusion grows around the lawsuit filed by networking company Cisco against Apple, alleging infringement of its trademark, namely iPhone, the label Cisco has on a WiFi walkaround VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phone it markets under its Linksys brand.Apple has been asking Cisco to hand over the name for more than two years. Agreement was apparently close, but coming too slowly. Mr Jobs had to go with the name as the announcement had to be made at the Macworld Expo on January 9.According to sources at Cisco, negotiations broke down when Apple refused to allow interoperability between Cisco's iPhone and Apple's.Most in the industry expect a settlement, but if it comes to an expensive punch-up in court, Apple would have several defences, among them that Cisco had until now failed to defend its trademark. Though it acquired Infogear six years ago, the iPhone name did not appear on Linksys or Cisco websites until December.
© 2007 The Age
