Sales by Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) at this year’s Taipei Computer Applications Show were 30 percent higher than a year earlier on stronger sales of notebook computers.
“We saw sales at the five-day computer exhibition hit NT$150 million [US$4.74 million], up about 30 percent from last year’s event,” Asustek senior product manager Jose Liao (廖逸翔), said.
“The increase in sales was the result of the launch of new ultra-thin notebook computer models to stimulate buying,” Liao said.
The computer applications show attracted a record 640,000 visitors during its run from last Thursday to Monday, 10 percent more than a year earlier, said the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the organizer of the trade show.
During the show, Asustek sold about 7,000 notebook computers, or one almost “every 30 minutes,” with its new U-series laptops proving particularly popular, TAITRA said.
Asustek said its desktop computers, LCD displays, LED displays and navigation cellphones also attracted interest.
On Monday, Asustek reported that its sales rose 11.8 percent last month from June to NT$23.07 billion, in contrast to rival computer makers that reported double-digit month-on-month declines in revenues last month.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) posted NT$86.19 billion in sales last month, down 14 percent from June, and Wistron Corp (緯創) had NT$48.97 billion in sales last month, down 12.8 percent from a month earlier.
Goldman Sachs has lowered its forecast for shipment growth of the global notebook computer sector for the third quarter of this year to 5 percent from 9 percent.
The investment bank said top global notebook computer vendors have cut orders to their OEM suppliers, leading to declines in sales by those OEM companies last month.
“The expected weaker demand in the third quarter reflects a slower pace of global economic growth,” said Joanne Chien, head of research at Digitimes.
Chien said “back to school” sales in Europe and the US are worse than expected, and she believed the market also expects Christmas season sales to be less than satisfactory because of declining economic fundamentals.
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