US computer monitor vendors Dell Inc and Hewlett Packard Co (HP) and China's Lenovo Group (聯想) may lose market share in the first half of the year after a major fire halted production lines at Lite-On Technology Corp (光寶科技), a major supplier, market researcher DisplaySearch said in its latest report.
The blaze could have a major impact on the landscape of the desktop liquid-crystal-display (LCD) monitor industry in the first and second quarters in terms of share-shift, rather than improving the balance between supply and demand, the Austin, Texas-based researcher said in the report released on Friday.
"Brands such as Dell, HP and Lenovo could be impacted the most," DisplaySearch said.
Dell and HP ranked second and third globally in terms of LCD monitor sales, tracking behind Samsung Electronics Co, DisplaySearch said.
In a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange last week, Lite-On, the world's fifth-biggest contract manufacturer of LCD monitors, said a fire broke out on Feb. 3 at a factory in southeastern China, damaging 14 PC monitor production lines.
There was no damage to LCD TV screen production lines, it said.
Approximately one-fifth of LCD monitors sold by Dell, HP and Lenovo are manufactured by Lite-On, DisplaySearch said in an LCD monitor report in the third quarter of last year.
Dell has been losing market share to stand-alone monitor brand Samsung over the past few quarters and a disaster such as this could cut their share further in the coming months, DisplaySearch said.
The impact could be the most severe in the North American market, where Dell accounts for approximately 30 percent of monitor imports, it said.
Financial impact on Dell may not be that severe, but Dell could lose market share to brands that do not rely on Lite-On, the researcher said.
LG Electronics Inc and Taiwan's Acer Inc ranked No. 4 and No. 5 respectively, in terms of LCD monitor sales, DisplaySearch said.
Last week, Lite-On said it would temporarily convert part of its LCD TV screen production lines to make PC monitors during the traditionally slack season. The company said inventories would meet demand in the next one to two months.
No employees were hurt during the fire, Lite-On said in the statement. Lite-On said it has filed a damages claim with Ping An Insurer (Group) Co of China (
Shares of Lite-On closed at NT$47.35, up 0.74 percent, on Feb. 1, the last trading session of the local bourse before the Lunar New Year holidays.
The stock market is scheduled to reopen tomorrow.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS