Considering that whole Galaxy Note 7 battery ordeal which Samsung has just now managed to contain and is getting ready to resume the sales of its latest phablet worldwide, the South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer didn’t exactly have the best month ever. However, the tech giant definitely has some things to be happy about, its performance in Taiwan being a big one. Namely, local retail channels in Taiwan have just started reporting official numbers from August according to which Samsung is still the top smartphone-making dog in the Far Eastern country.
Generally speaking, Taiwanese smartphone shipments were 7% higher in August in comparison to July which coincides with the release of the aforementioned Galaxy Note 7. More specifically, 663,000 phones shipped in Taiwan last month and Samsung once again managed to top both the sales volume and sales value lists in the country, DigiTimes reports. Again, this was mostly thanks to the company’s latest phablet. After Samsung, ASUS managed to close the most sales in its home country last month, followed by HTC, Apple, and Sony. The latest sales value reports suggest that Apple was right behind Samsung in terms of actual revenue with Sony, HTC, and ASUS squeezing into top five, in that order. While specific numbers are yet to be released, this more or less coincides with what all of the aforementioned companies are offering and the popularity of smartphone brands in Taiwan. Namely, while ASUS is usually selling slightly more devices than Apple in the Far Eastern country—this month being no exception—its products are cheaper than Apple’s offerings which means that Apple’s sales value was higher.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Samsung managed to hold onto its top spot this month as the Taiwanese version of the Galaxy Note 7 shipped with the infamous faulty batteries produced by Samsung SDI. In other words, the South Korean phone maker issued a recall in Taiwan and it’s basically a given that not all Galaxy Note 7 buyers were happy to replace their devices with almost identical models after finding out that their new flagship has a tendency to catch fire and explode while charging.