The nation’s top three laptop contract manufacturers all reported rises in their cumulative sales for the first five months on the back of rising demand for laptop computers.
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s biggest laptop contract manufacturer by shipments, yesterday reported cumulative sales from January to May at NT$364.9 billion (US$11 billion), a jump of 89 percent from that period last year. Revenues for last month expanded 93 percent to NT$73.4 billion from a year earlier, according to a company statement issued yesterday.
The No. 2 manufacturer, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), saw revenue growth of 66.8 percent to NT$435.9 billion for the first five months, it said in a statement. Quanta’s sales last month expanded 84.4 percent to NT$92.5 billion, it said.
Their smaller rival Wistron Corp (緯創資通) posted NT$236 billion in sales for the first five months, a 23 percent rise from a year ago. Its revenues for last month rose 25.5 percent to NT$48.6 billion.
Concord Securities (康和證券) said in a report late last month that Wistron has been exploring clients other than Acer Inc (宏碁), as the company is facing challenges such as pricing pressure and a looming threat from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which became a notebook contract manufacturer last year.
The report said Wistron, a manufacturing arm spun off from Acer in 2001, also makes laptops for Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), and has been aggressively diversifying into non-notebook PC areas such as LCD TV production to seek new revenue drivers.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained