Super-light laptops, such as ultrabooks, will become the next growth engine for notebook computers this year, according to a Taipei-based research firm.
WitsView, the panel research division of market intelligence provider TrendForce Corp (集邦科技), forecast recently that notebook shipments will reach 213.5 million units this year, up 9.4 percent from 195.1 million units last year.
Regular notebooks will increase 13.3 percent year-on-year from 172.8 million units last year to 195 million units this year, while netbook shipments will dip 17 percent from 22.3 million units to 18.5 million units during the same -period, WitsView said.
Overall shipment growth will be driven mainly by Intel Corp’s new ultrabook platform “Ivy Bridge,” which is expected to be launched in the second quarter of the year, as well as the roll-out of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system in the second half, WitsView said.
The research firm predicted that ultrabooks would account for about 10 percent of all notebook shipments this year, after accounting for less than 5 percent of total shipments last year.
In addition to Ultrabooks, many PC brands also plan to launch laptops that are slimmed down to between 22mm and 25mm thick, which will further speed up the adoption of such lightweight products in the notebook market, WitsView said.
In October, Taiwanese PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) said it planned to ship between 250,000 and 300,000 units of its Aspire S3 super-thin laptops in the fourth quarter.
Acer said it expected the Ultrabook line to account for between 25 percent and 35 percent of the company’s total notebook shipments this year.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) said last month that it expected shipments of its Ultrabook model, dubbed the “Zenbook,” to hit the company’s fourth quarter target of 300,000 units.
The company hopes to build on the growing popularity of Ultrabooks to increase shipments of notebook computers by 22 percent this year.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
The National Stabilization Fund (NSF, 國安基金) is to continue supporting local shares, as uncertainties in international politics and the economy could affect Taiwanese industries’ global deployment and corporate profits, as well as affect stock movement and investor confidence, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday. The NT$500 billion (US$17.1 billion) fund would remain active in the stock market as the US’ tariff measures have not yet been fully finalized, which would drive international capital flows and global supply chain restructuring, the ministry said after the a meeting of the fund’s steering committee. Along with ongoing geopolitical risks and an unfavorable