Taiwan reported solid first-quarter economic growth on Friday as strong global demand for components for the new iPhone and other electronic gadgets keep Asia's hi-tech factories humming. The trade-reliant economy expanded for the fourth quarter in a row as export orders surged, and could pick up more momentum in coming quarters as vendors gear up for Apple Inc's launch of the iPhone 8 later in the year.

The island's gross domestic product (GDP) rose 2.56 percent in January-March from a year earlier, easing from 2.88 percent in the previous three months but still expanding a bit faster than expected. Analysts polled by Reuters had seen growth of 2.45 percent. "The data has exceeded our forecast...The government has room to raise its 2017 full-year target from 1.92 percent currently," said Hsu Kuo-an, an analyst of Capital Securities in Taipei.

"The question is, will it be raised higher than 2 percent, as many institutions are expecting?" Capital Economics said after the data that full-year growth could accelerate to 3 percent this year. Taiwan posted strong exports in the first quarter "based on a global economic recovery, price rebounds for global commodities and continued strong semiconductor demand," the statistics agency said in a statement.

On a seasonally adjusted quarterly revised (SAQR) basis, the economy grew 0.72 percent in the March quarter from 0.45 percent in the December quarter, the agency said.

A number of new tech product launches this year bode well for companies and economies in the global electronics supply chain.

China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore have also reported a rebound in exports in recent months, often led by electronics from cutting-edge memory chips to hard drives and flat screens.

But analysts cautioned Taiwan's economy remains highly reliant on external demand, and it remains to be seen whether the benefits of the export boom will trickle through to domestic consumption.

Taiwan companies created new jobs at a strong pace in March, a private manufacturing survey showed recently.

However, concerns about a potential rise in US trade protectionism continue to hang over Asia's exporters, though the new Trump administration has taken a somewhat softer line than expected on regional powerhouse China so far.

Trump stunned South Korea on Friday when he said in an interview with Reuters that would "renegotiate or terminate" a free trade pact between the two countries.

Copyright Reuters, 2017