Acer Inc (宏碁) said it’s aiming to capture 15 percent of global tablet-computer sales next year, challenging Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) and Samsung Electronics Co for second place in a market dominated by Apple Inc’s iPad.
Shipments will begin next quarter as the Taipei-based PC maker jumps into a market where global shipments may reach 50 million units next year, chief executive officer Gianfranco Lanci said on Wednesday in an interview in Chongqing, China.
Lanci’s projections indicate Acer, the top maker of low-end laptops known as netbooks, may sell more than twice the number of tablets JPMorgan Chase & Co estimated last month. The push highlights the intensifying competition to become No. 2 in the fastest-growing segment of the computer industry as companies from RIM to Samsung battle to offer the most popular alternative to the iPad.
“The company has talked aggressively about the tablet market, but Apple is still very dominating,” said Steven Tseng (曾緒良), an analyst at RBS Asia Ltd. “Aside from price, it’s hard to tell what Acer has in their products to differentiate themselves and outperform. If they make cheap models like in the netbook area, they may have success. They’re really good at volume business.”
Still, Tseng rates Acer shares “hold,” partly on concern that new tablet products may not be able to make up for declining sales of netbook computers.
THE COMPETITION
Acer last month unveiled a lineup of three tablet computers — two devices based on Google Inc’s Android operating system and one on Microsoft Corp’s Windows software.
The tablets may be priced between US$299 and $599, depending on configuration, screen size and connectivity, Lanci said. The iPad is priced between US$499 and US$829 in the US.
Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, unveiled its Galaxy Tab in September, and RIM plans to release the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook next quarter.
“There is competition and we are set to compete,” Lanci said. “We have strength in designing and developing products. We have strength in terms of channels. We have strength, probably more than other people, in emerging markets.”
‘DEAD ON ARRIVAL’
Apple’s iPad sales will almost double to 25.5 million next year, while Samsung will sell 6 million tablets and RIM will sell 5 million PlayBooks, according to September estimates at Canaccord Genuity.
Tablets bridge the gap between laptops and smartphones such as RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone. Apple, which showed the appeal of such devices by selling 3 million iPads in the first 80 days after the product debuted in April, accounted for 95 percent of the tablet market last quarter, according to Strategy Analytics.
Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs in October said that devices such as the PlayBook are “dead on arrival” because they are too small to compete with the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch screen.
Lanci dismissed Jobs’ comment, saying there was room for both sizes.
“It depends on user needs,” Lanci said. “While a 10-inch tablet is a very good solution at home or in the office, seven inches can be a very good solution for people traveling or with different needs, even replacing e-books.”
CHONGQING PLANT
Acer will start delivering its tablets in the first quarter from existing plants in and around Shanghai, Lanci said. Production of the devices may shift to a plant in Chongqing, which is part of the US$150 million investment in the city that Acer and the municipal government agreed on Wednesday, Lanci said. The new facility will start operations in the third quarter, he said.
The Chongqing plant will have the capacity to produce 30 million to 40 million notebooks or netbook computers annually, and will also manufacture smartphones and tablets, Lanci said. The factory will help Acer almost double the portion of sales it gets in China to 25 percent of revenue within three years, from more than 10 percent projected for next year, he said.
China will likely overtake the US as the world’s largest computer market within three years, Lanci said.
Acer had a 13 percent share of the global PC market in the third quarter, ranking it second after Hewlett-Packard Co, according to IDC.
Lanci said that the growth of tablet computer sales wouldn’t kill the company’s netbook business.
“We don’t see the netbook market dying or declining, except in the US,” Lanci said. “For netbooks outside the US, we still see very good growth.
The two segments, we are convinced, will coexist together. We see tablets as another opportunity to grow the PC market in the future, not tablets as replacing other devices,” he said.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS