BenQ Corp (明基電通), the nation's No. 1 mobile-phone maker, told investors yesterday that revenue for the third quarter would remain flat compared to the second quarter because of the declining average selling prices (ASPs) of its display products, which account for nearly half of its revenue.
The market is expected to recover next month, boosting liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor shipments, while ASP would drop in the meantime, said BenQ's president Sheaffer Lee (李錫華).
With slow demands for LCD monitors in the second quarter, BenQ posted a net income of NT$2.97 billion (US$87.2 million), or NT$1.28 per share, in the quarter, 3 percent down from NT$3.07 billion, or NT$1.32 per share, in the first quarter.
Net sales slightly decreased to NT$42.06 billion from NT$42.22 billion over the same time, and gross margin dropped to 11.4 percent from 12.7 percent, according to the company.
BenQ chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) said retail prices of LCD televisions are expected to drop below US$50 per inch next year, driving a business boom for the market at the same time.
The company has recruited marketing professionals in European and Asian countries to boost their LCD TV business by taking the chance, Lee Kun-yao said.
BenQ expects to at least double its LCD TV shipments next year from this year's 400,000 units in line with worldwide demand, which is expected to grow from 8 million units this year to 16 million units, said Stevie Chou (周奇賢), vice president of research for SinoPac Securities Corp (建華證券).
However, BenQ said yesterday that it has also seen a growing handset inventory in China and many other countries in the current quarter.
On average, the company saw its products stay around 48 days in warehouses before being shipped in the second quarter, four days more than the previous quarter. LCD monitors, in particular, stayed up to 60 days, compared with two weeks in the first quarter.
BenQ should be able to meet its goal of shipping 16 million handsets this year, as it shipped 9.5 million handsets in the first half of the year, Chou said.
He also said the company might ship around 1.73 million LCD monitors this quarter, up from 1.6 million last quarter.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts