Samsung Leads Share of Taiwan's Smartphone Market

Samsung held the biggest share of 27.4% of Taiwan's smartphone market, according to a survey conducted between December 22, 2013 and Jan. 5, 2014 by Trend Survey & Research Co., Ltd.

The survey company, contracted by venture capital fund AppWorks Ventures and the non-profit Digital Convergence Association, Taiwan, polled by phone Taiwanese consumers aged over 20 and completed 1,508 questionnaires.

According to the survey, over 60% of the respondents used smartphones, 27.4% of whom using Samsung smartphones, 25.8% HTC phones, 19.4%  iPhone, and 13.3% Sony phones. Windows smartphone users accounted for only 4%. Compared with the survey conducted in 2012, the latest survey shows that Sony's market share grew 3.7%.

The survey also found that over half of the smartphone holders used mobile Internet service and 68.5% of the holders downloaded app software. They downloaded Apple iOS more frequently than downloading Google Android OS and Microsoft Windows OS. Each holder downloaded 22 apps on average, with the mostly used apps numbered below five.

Only 11.5% of the app users said they were willing to pay for the downloads, with relatively high number of them willing to pay NT$51-100 (US$1.6-3.3) at the most. Overall, the average sum willingly paid per app is  NT$187 (US$6.2).

Game downloads accounted for the leading 41.2% of the paid app downloads in the latest survey while paid productivity-tool downloads surged 14.8% and paid music and video downloads increased 3.5%.

Only 16.5% of the smartphone users said they shopped online via app stores whereas 29.1% said they fear online theft of personal data at the stores. (KL)