Global sales of mobile phones are expected to grow to between 1.1 billion and 1.2 billion units in 2007, up as much as 20% from about 1 billion units sold last year, a Texas Instruments official, quoted by a Reuters report, said.
'We are optimistic on the growth momentum of low-price mobile phones,' Terry Cheng, the president of Texas Instruments Asia, told Reuters.
'The company has shipped large amounts of chips for low-price mobile phones since November and December last year, which will help boost our business significantly this year,' he said.
TI established its Asia headquarters in Taiwan in 1994, the Reuters report said.
The Reuters report further quoted Cheng as saying that the global semiconductor industry could bottom out in either the first quarter or the second quarter this year after inventory corrections came to an end. But the recovery would not be big, he said.
Analysts have widely expected the sector would recover from the second quarter, with customers placing new orders for chips used in personal computers and new-generation consumer gadgets, the Reuters report said.
Riding a consumer and entertainment boom, TI would put efforts on R&D and manufacturing of chips related to wireless communications, video and other multimedia applications, Cheng said.