Global notebook computer shipments in the second quarter of this year are expected to grow dramatically following better-than-expected figures in the January to March period, a Taipei-based analyst firm said yesterday.
Digitimes Research forecast worldwide notebook shipments of 55 million units in the second quarter, a 17.6 percent quarterly increase and a 9.5 percent rise year-on-year.
“This points to a full recovery of the industry in 2012,” Digitimes senior analyst Joanne Chien (簡佩萍) said.
She predicted that global notebook shipments for the whole year would reach 236 million units, up 17 percent from last year, with the introduction of more low to medium-priced models and the release of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system.
In terms of brand breakdown, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) and Apple Inc are both expected to post 30 percent growth, with the former very likely to replace Dell Inc as the world’s fourth-largest notebook brand, she said.
However, Samsung Electronics Co and Toshiba Corp, which also did well in the first three months, might have a hard time in the second quarter, Chien said.
The South Korean and Japanese companies will not be able to maintain their momentum because they are struggling to keep up with the average growth rate of the industry, she said.
Global shipments of Ultrabooks are forecast at 1.5 million units in the second quarter, about the same as the expected strong showing by Apple’s MacBook Air. However, Ultrabooks will continue to trail in the notebook market, accounting for only 2.7 percent of the total, Chien forecast.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,