Dell Inc’s quarterly revenue just missed Wall Street estimates, and the world’s No. 3 PC vendor warned that full-year revenue could be hurt by an industry-wide shortage of hard drives.
Uncertainties surrounding the economy and the hard drive shortage means that Dell’s fiscal 2012 revenue is tracking at the lower end of its growth forecast of 1 percent to 5 percent, the company said.
Investors fear a slowdown in PC manufacturing through next year after flooding in Thailand severely disrupted production of hard drives, a key component in computers.
“To the extent that we see higher [hard drive] prices we’ll also see some offsets in other components and we’re going to do everything we can to protect our customers. But maybe in some cases we do have to raise our prices,” chief financial officer Brian Gladden said in an interview.
“The shortage of hard drives will force Dell to prioritize toward higher-value customers and products,” Gladden said.
Dell also appears to not have benefited much from the disarray at bigger rival Hewlett Packard Co (HP), which spent much of the last quarter considering whether to spin off its PC business.
The company lost market share during the third quarter to Asian rival Lenovo Group (聯想), which vaulted past it to claim the No. 2 ranking in PCs behind market leader HP.
“The PC business will remain difficult over the next year,” Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White said.
He cited pressure from slowing public sector spending as various government agencies around the world take austerity measures over the next year.
Dell’s public business generated revenue of US$4.2 billion, which was down 2 percent from the same quarter last year owing to weakness in the US and Western Europe.
Desktop PC revenue slid 6 percent to US$3.4 billion as Dell’s sales to consumers fell 6 percent over the same period.
CEO Michael Dell said the company was moving away from low-margin businesses.
“We’re choosing not to participate in low value opportunities which have put short-term pressure on revenue growth, but have been a real driver of our expanded margins and growing earnings,” Dell told analysts on a conference call.
Gross margins slipped to 23.1 percent from 23.2 percent in the prior quarter, but rose from 20 percent a year earlier.
Dell said revenue in its fiscal third quarter was essentially flat at US$15.36 billion, but slightly lower than the average analyst estimate of US$15.65 billion according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Analysts on average had projected a 1.6 percent climb in Dell’s fiscal 2012 revenue to almost US$62.5 billion. Net earnings rose to US$893 million, or US$0.49 a share, from US$822 million, or US$0.42 a share, in the year-ago period.
Excluding items, Dell earned US$0.54 a share, better than the average analyst estimate of US$0.47.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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