Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the world's largest laptop computer maker on contract basis, expects shipments to grow 10 percent in the next quarter, rebounding from the seasonally slack first quarter, a company executive said yesterday.
"The second quarter will be a better period than the first," Quanta vice chairman C.C. Leung (梁次震) told reporters on the sideline of a ceremony for a WiMAX partnership with Alcatel-Lucent.
Quanta, whose customers include Acer Inc and Hewlett Packard Co, could ship 8.46 million notebook computers during the January to March period, from 9.4 million units last quarter.
Growing concern over the US subprime mortgage crisis should not upset the upward momentum for the notebook computer industry, Liang said.
"Demand should be sustainable as laptops have much stronger performance and are not just a PC anymore. People play games, watch movies, or do other things on notebooks," Leung said.
"It will grow. What we are not sure of is whether the business will grow 25 percent or 30 percent [annually,]" he said.
Quanta retained its shipment projection for this year, during which it expects to ship at least 20 percent more laptops, or about 39 million units, this year than the 32 million units sold last year, Leung said.
Quanta shares rose 2.3 percent to NT$40.1 yesterday.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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