Notebook shipments are expected to grow in the current quarter, bringing a risk of a shortage of components in the near future, Citigroup Research said in a report yesterday.
"We remain alert to the potential of component shortages," Kirk Yang (楊應超), who tracks the PC sector for Citigroup, said in the report.
The components at risk include batteries, liquid-crystal-display panels, printed circuit boards and especially power management chips, whose availability is already tight before the peak shipment months of October and November, he said.
Computer makers, including Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co, have already been troubled by minor shortages.
"There is a lack of panels, chipsets and memory," said Benson Lin (
But the issue should not be big enough to impact the company's portable computer sales in its home market, as it still expects its local sales to grow 30 percent when compared to last year, he said.
Dennis Chen (
Despite the potential problem, Taiwanese contract makers are expected to usher in a busy third quarter, Citigroup said.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦) and Wistron Corp (緯創) -- the nation's top-tier portable computer contract makers -- which have underperformed the market, will see strong third quarter momentum driving an imminent rebound, Yang said.
For the second half of the year, the notebook market is better prepared for the new Vista operating system. New models embedded with Intel's Santa Rosa platform will be shipped from the middle of this quarter, and Microsoft's plan to release a Service Pack 1 for Vista later this year should help improve sales growth, he said.
"Our channel checks suggest demand momentum will significantly ramp up from August. We have revised upwards our third quarter sequential growth forecast for notebook shipments to 20 percent from 18 percent, higher than the normal 15.5 percent seasonal growth," Yang said.
Taiwanese contract makers are not expected to enjoy any potential upside in gross margins, however, because of intensifying competition and order reshuffles, even though consumer notebooks usually carry higher retail prices and better gross margins than commercial ones, he said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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