The traditionally slow second quarter may not be that bad for Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, thanks to growing corporate replacement and clone market demands, an analyst at JP Morgan Chase Bank Taiwan Branch said yesterday.
"Although the second quarter is a slack season for motherboard makers by tradition, there is a chance that we could see less of a decline in shipments this quarter year-on-year," said Jenny Lai, an analyst at JP Morgan Chase Bank Taiwan.
The nation's motherboard makers participating in the Cebit show (in Hanover this March) also obtained better-than-expected orders, she said.
Therefore, the slide in shipments this quarter is estimated to be as low as 5 percent to 10 percent compared to the first quarter this year, Lai said.
Another analyst, however, was more pessimistic about the outlook this season.
"We expected that shipments this quarter would drop by 10 percent to 15 percent, in line with our experience," said Chou Chin-chung (
Chou also attributed the drop in shipments to the delay of Intel Corp's new central processing unit (CPU) products, Prescott for desktop and Dothan for laptop, from May to June.
The delay put off the CPU price cut that originally may have happen in the second quarter, delaying the downstream clients in the motherboard industry in their launching of new products, he said.
The upstream chipset makers, including VIA Technologies Inc (威盛電子), saw a decline in revenue by 10 percent to 15 percent last month, which was not a good sign for motherboard makers, he said.
Chou however was upbeat about the performance of Asustek Computer Inc (
Asustek estimated shipment to drop slightly by 5 percent to 10 percent this quarter from the previous quarter, said Sunny Han (
Asustek, along with its subsidiary ASRock (
The company's annual shipments may outstrip the forecast of 40 million units to 45 million units this year with earnings per share to reach an estimated NT$5.99, up from NT$5.25 last year, Chou said.
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