TAIPEI: Taiwan's exports posted their biggest drop in two years in March as shipments to major markets flagged, a sign that demand for gadgets like smartphones from Apple Inc may be cooling.
Electronics exports, which had held up well in recent months as the island's technology manufacturers make many of the components packed into the hot-selling iPhone 6, lost ground in March, slipping 0.2 percent last month from a year earlier.
Taiwan's export trend is a key gauge of global demand for technology gadgets worldwide.
The export-reliant economy is one of Asia's major exporters, especially of technology goods. A large portion of orders for exports tend to be sent to Taiwanese factories located in China, which are then exported from China into final consumer markets.
Taiwan's tech exports and overall export orders hit record levels last year primarily driven by demand for the iPhone 6, launched in September. But if that effect is weakening then Taiwan's exports, including those for tech-related goods, could fall back to single-digit growth going forward, analysts said.
"The baseline scenario is export growth will be around zero percent this year," said Tim Condon, economist with ING in Singapore.
Annual exports in March fell 8.9 percent, widening from February's 6.7 percent fall and was worse than the 3.1 percent decline forecast in a Reuters poll. It was the sharpest percentage drop since February 2013 when exports slumped 15.8 percent.
Exports to Europe in March fell 13.6 percent from a year earlier, while exports to Japan eased 11.6 percent and were off 8.0 percent to China. Exports to the United States for the same period were flat, Ministry of Finance data showed on Wednesday.
Yeh Maan-Tzwu, director general of the ministry's statistics department, said it was difficult to see exports growing for the second quarter. For the first quarter, exports fell 4.2 percent from the same three months a year earlier.
A sole bright spot was the 10.2 percent growth recorded for integrated circuits in the first quarter, which likely indicates strength in Taiwan's semiconductor industry, a tech segment that is not tethered solely to demand for iPhones.
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