Personal computer company Acer Inc, whose stock has risen 76 percent this year, said profit will fall less than earlier forecast in 2003 as European laptop PC sales beat targets.
Group net income will drop 16 percent to NT$7.3 billion (US$213.7 million), from NT$8.7 billion last year, compared with its March forecast of a 31 percent drop. Sales will rise 43 percent, higher than an earlier prediction of 23 percent growth, the company said in a release.
Acer has contracted all of its manufacturing to partners including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (
"Acer has been following a brand strategy after abandoning manufacturing," said Barro Liao (
Shares of Acer rose NT$0.50, or 1 percent, to NT$50.50. The stock has gained more than double the 33 percent rise in TAIEX this year.
Acer is benefiting as a strong euro and new laptop models with wireless features spur demand in Europe. The region was the fastest-growing PC market in the third quarter, helped by a more than 50 percent rise in notebook shipments, researcher IDC said.
Acer, one of the first PC makers to introduce laptops that use Intel Corp's wireless-enabled Centrino chips, said last week it may become the largest seller of notebooks in Europe during the fourth quarter, displacing Hewlett-Packard Co.
The company has gained market share by offering better prices to distributors, said Tony Tseng, an analyst with Merrill Lynch & Co in Taipei.
"Acer's channel partners can make more profit than they can with Hewlett-Packard, which has been squeezing margins," said Tseng, who has a "buy" rating on Acer shares.
Support from Acer's manufacturing partners in Taiwan has also enabled the company to offer more laptop models than rivals International Business Machines Corp and Toshiba Corp, he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the