Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s largest contract notebook producer, yesterday said its revenue grew 18.9 percent to NT$99.24 billion (US$3.40 billion) last month, from September’s NT$83.5 billion.
The increase was mainly due to more laptop shipments and increasing demand for non-notebook products, Quanta’s investor relations official Alai Chiu (邱珮倫) said.
Last month, Quanta shipped 4.9 million notebooks, up 4.26 percent from 4.7 million in September.
“We forecast notebook shipments will remain flat or decline in November and December, and our annual notebook shipment growth is likely to be less than 1 percent, contributing about 70 percent of our total annual revenue,” Chiu said.
At an investors conference on Oct. 31, the company said it expected sales of non-notebook products to increase 30 percent this year from last year.
“We expect non-notebook shipments could account for about 30 percent of our total revenue this year,” Chiu said. “We believe that demand for non-notebook products, such as tablet computers or smartphones, will continue to grow ahead of the Christmas holidays, driving the company to achieve sustained sales growth this year and next year.”
Quanta did not disclose its sales target for this year.
Quanta’s domestic rival, Wistron Corp (緯創), the world’s third-largest contract notebook maker, yesterday reported revenue of NT$55.42 billion for last month, down 5.12 percent from NT$58.42 billion in the previous month.
Wistron said in a separate statement that its notebook shipments were 2.7 million units last month, down 6.9 percent from September’s 2.9 million units.
“Though the company’s notebook shipment performance was worse-than-expected, non-notebook products saw high growth, leading the company to achieve accumulated revenue growth,” Wistron public relations director Joyce Chou (周文玲) said by telephone.
Wistron’s accumulated revenue between January and last month was NT$544.55 billion, up 3.55 percent compared with NT$525.88 billion in the same period last year.
“Last month, we sold a total of 250,000 tablet computers and are confident that we can achieve our target of 2.5 million and 6 million shipments this year and next year,” Chou said.
Wistron remains cautious about Windows 8-supported notebook or mobile devices, she said.
“For next year, we believe non-notebook products will help us achieve revenue growth of 10 percent month-on-month and 15 percent year-on-year.”
Meanwhile, PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday said its unconsolidated sales last month were NT$35.55 billion, up 11.06 percent from NT$32.01 billion in September and 13.58 percent higher than the NT$31.3 billion a year earlier.
Total unconsolidated sales between January and last month were NT$305 billion, up 15.86 percent year-on-year, Asustek said.
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