Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s biggest notebook computer maker, yesterday raised its forecast for notebook shipments to 50 million units this year in response to growing demand from customers, indicating that the effects of the European debt crisis could be limited.
That revised figure represented about 32 percent growth from last year’s 37.8 million units. Compal originally projected shipments would expand to 48 million units this year.
“Our judgment is based on customer outlook and forecast by market researchers,” company president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) told a shareholders’ meeting yesterday. Compal supplies notebooks to the world’s major PC makers including Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc.
Global shipments of laptops would rise this year to 210 million from 160 million units last year, Chen said, citing an unspecified researcher’s projection.
Reiterating his optimism about end demand, Chen told reporters that Compal would ship 5 percent to 10 percent more laptops next quarter, compared with this quarter’s 12.5 million units.
Compal planned to ship to customers its first batch of tablet devices sometime in the second half of the year as well as e-readers next month, which are part of the company’s greater efforts to combat a falling gross margin, which fell to 4.2 percent last quarter from 5 percent a year ago, Chen said.
To cope with a sharper rebound in customer demand from last year’s economic slump, Compal said it planned to boost capacity mainly at its Chinese plant in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. It would also consider setting up new manufacturing facilities in China’s hinterland, rather than pursuing the lower labor costs that inland China offers.
“It is not right to move like nomads just to seek lower-cost labor ... Labor cost in those remote areas will go up too because of urbanization,” company chairman Rock Hsu (許勝雄) told shareholders.
Compal said it planned to increase benefits for workers at its Chinese plants next month, but has no plan to raise wages, Chen said, following an increase in wages and benefits by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) for its employees in south China factories.
Compal raised the pay for its Chinese workers to 960 yuan (US$140) a month from 850 yuan in Feburary. It also said it has no plan to pass rising costs from higher wages and component prices to customers any time soon, as Hon Hai did.
Meanwhile, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) acknowledged the increasing trend to pay more to Chinese workers and said it would react accordingly with its peers to Chinese government rules and measures, company chairman Barry Lam (林百里) told shareholders yesterday.
Additional reporting by Jason Tan
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