Acer Inc (宏碁) will continue to produce netbook PCs, although rival Samsung Electronics Co reportedly plans to quit the market early next year, a top Acer executive said yesterday.
On Nov. 25, French Web site Blogeee quoted an e-mail sent by Samsung to its trading partners, saying that the South Korean company would discontinue its 10.1-inch netbook product range in the first quarter of next year following the introduction of a new strategy for the coming year.
The company will focus on -ultra-portable products in the 11.6-inch to 12-inch size range, as well as Intel Corp’s ultrabooks.
However, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin (林顯郎) said the company would hold on to its netbook business because of demand from emerging markets.
“There is still demand for netbooks in developing countries such as Indonesia and India, where netbooks have become critical tools among students for information education,” Lin said. “Acer will absolutely keep making netbooks, and we expect that Intel will release the next version of its netbook CPU as early as February next year.”
“Some brands might decide to quit the business because they lack economic scale, so the future netbook market is expected to be led by two major players — Acer and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩),” he said.
Sales of netbooks accounted for between 18 percent and 20 percent of Acer’s total notebook shipments for the first three quarters of this year, higher than the industry average which is between 11 percent and 12 percent, Lin said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS