BenQ concerned about market outlook

In the wake of its poor performance in the third quarter, BenQ Corp (明基電通) said yesterday that it remained conservative about the market outlook in the current quarter.

"The nation's laptop market saw sales of 20 percent less than the expected target in the third quarter," Danny Yao (姚鴻州), president of BenQ Asia-Pacific Corp (明基亞太), BenQ's marketing arm for local market, told reporters.

Yao attributed the flat market to the less-than-ideal stock market performance, declining consumption confidence driven by the soaring crude oil prices, and domestic inflationary environment.

As the effect may linger, "we are conservative about the market climate in the last quarter," Yao said.

BenQ is not the only laptop vendor to be cautious about the market outlook.

The local branch of International Business Machines Corp was also cautious about the personal computer market for this quarter, Laurence Hwang (黃維德), IBM Taiwan's personal systems group executive, said late last month, citing the possible influences of the stock market and the year-end legislator election.

He said the caution was warranted, even though the latest laptop processors from Intel -- for linking notebook computers to the Internet with wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology -- were expected to help boost sales of laptops.